Picture history of my Greenland Kayak build.
I'm following instructions from here:
Build a Greenland Kayak. This calls for a 16' boat, but that wouldn't fit in my garage easily so I've shortened it to a 14' one. I've used white pine for most of the wood and ash for the ribs. It's made without any glue, nails, or screws...all parts are either doweled together or lashed with synthetic seine. The boat is covered with a "skin" which I'm thinking of using aircraft-grade dacron for. (other options are canvas or nylon). The skin gets painted with a waterproof coating (e.g. polyurethane).
Here's some example pics of what this should look like when done:
I started with the gunwales, this shows the bow where the two gunwales come together and will get doweled:
Here are the full length gunwales before getting doweled together:
Gunwales lashed together with a spreader bar in the middle
Doweled the gunwales togther and have added all the deck beams (also doweled in). The blue ropes hold the gunwales against the deck beams to give the boat the proper shape.
Once you tighten up the lashings against the beams, the angles cut in the beam edges cause the gunwales to tilt, giving the bowed curvature of the deck from front to back.
Next I lash the deck beams to the gunwales (in addition to the dowels): I used synthetic sein (kind of a waxy cord).
View of the lashing at the knee brace deck beam (from below). A groove is cut into the gunwale on the outside so the lashing doesn't create a bump in the skin once the boat is covered. The slots in the bottom of the gunwale here are where the ribs will fit into later.
After installing the keelson and ribs: the ribs are ash that I soaked for 3 days, then steamed prior to bending. Next step is to lash the ribs to the keelson, add hull and deck stringers, then put the "skin" on.
