MarkVK
Returning Member
I'm undertaking the build of the Frej, a strip-built kayak designed by Bjorn Thomasson. I've talked with John Abercrombie (hereafter, assume references to "John" are John A) about his experience building two versions of the Frej, and even took a trip to Victoria to paddle John's boats and confirm that I enjoy the way the Frej handles. (Thanks, John!) I'm starting a thread to document my process.
I'll be building in my garage space. It's basically a one-car garage (full of non-car stuff) with a room behind it where I'll be doing most of the work. The building is dilapidated and small, but I figure I can make it work. I've covered the walls with plastic drop-cloth material to cut down on drafts and dust. You'll see what I mean in the pictures.
This picture makes my garage look more crowded than it is because I've set up two portable tables with my neighbor's old table saw in between to rip the plywood for a strongback -- and on top of that, it started raining so I pulled some things back into the garage that were out in the driveway while I was working.
I decided to use a strongback system based on what OrcaBoats.ca uses on his YouTube channel. I built a 16’ beam out of a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood. The top is 5” wide and it is glued and screwed together.
I used a string-line to snap a center line and then penciled it in. The form supports are 4.5”x8” rectangles of plywood with two notches in the bottom and two in the top. At each station on the strongback, a 2x2 cross piece holds the bottom carriage bolts. I pulled a taut string from Station 1 to Station 12 and then adjusted each support for height and center line against the string and used the bottom carriage bolts and wing nuts to tighten them in place.
Each wooden form is held in place on the form support using two carriage bolts (except form 1 and 12, which are only wide enough for one bolt and will use modified form supports (not completed yet).
In addition to letting me paddle his boats and answering a whole battery of questions, John was extremely generous in giving me forms 2 through 11. This is super helpful, but I complicated things by deciding that the smaller sized Frej would fit my weight and use case. Accordingly, I have been tracing the smaller outlines from the Frej S plans onto the wooden forms and I'll be cutting/shaping the forms to the slightly smaller size and cutting the missing Form 1 based on the pattern traced from the plans.
That's where I am as of today. I'll be traveling for a little while, so it will probably be two weeks or more before I post again. Thanks for reading this far!
I'll be building in my garage space. It's basically a one-car garage (full of non-car stuff) with a room behind it where I'll be doing most of the work. The building is dilapidated and small, but I figure I can make it work. I've covered the walls with plastic drop-cloth material to cut down on drafts and dust. You'll see what I mean in the pictures.
This picture makes my garage look more crowded than it is because I've set up two portable tables with my neighbor's old table saw in between to rip the plywood for a strongback -- and on top of that, it started raining so I pulled some things back into the garage that were out in the driveway while I was working.
I decided to use a strongback system based on what OrcaBoats.ca uses on his YouTube channel. I built a 16’ beam out of a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood. The top is 5” wide and it is glued and screwed together.
I used a string-line to snap a center line and then penciled it in. The form supports are 4.5”x8” rectangles of plywood with two notches in the bottom and two in the top. At each station on the strongback, a 2x2 cross piece holds the bottom carriage bolts. I pulled a taut string from Station 1 to Station 12 and then adjusted each support for height and center line against the string and used the bottom carriage bolts and wing nuts to tighten them in place.
Each wooden form is held in place on the form support using two carriage bolts (except form 1 and 12, which are only wide enough for one bolt and will use modified form supports (not completed yet).
In addition to letting me paddle his boats and answering a whole battery of questions, John was extremely generous in giving me forms 2 through 11. This is super helpful, but I complicated things by deciding that the smaller sized Frej would fit my weight and use case. Accordingly, I have been tracing the smaller outlines from the Frej S plans onto the wooden forms and I'll be cutting/shaping the forms to the slightly smaller size and cutting the missing Form 1 based on the pattern traced from the plans.
That's where I am as of today. I'll be traveling for a little while, so it will probably be two weeks or more before I post again. Thanks for reading this far!
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