Ravenswood in Melbourne, Aus

[coucal]

Ravenswood, frames and coaming in hoop pine ply, stringers in WRC, polyester skin bought from the Kudzu store finished with clear Aquacote 2-part polyurethane.

Mr Horton's book is right - I was so desperate to get the boat in the water during the last bit of fitout it almost sent me crazy.

Then it was suddenly finished, and I just stood around looking at it, putting off and putting off the 'flotation trials'... 

 

Boat on the car.  I really wanted that translucent finish.

 

Edited January 20, 2018 by coucal
added more pics

[coucal]

First trials in the Yarra.  Very fast and comfortable - actually, the rate at which the boat accelerated from the first stroke of the paddle was a bit of a shock. 

 

[coucal]

[Kudzu]

Great job. Love the finish. One of these days, if I have reskin I will probably do a finish like that too.

[bigtoepony]

Hi Coucal,

Your kayak looks fantastic.

I am about to build a stonefly canoe and am wondering if I can get the fabric in Melbourne. I see you bought your fabric from the kudzu store. Is that economic? and did you get your finish from the kudzu store too.

Thanks

Tony

 

[coucal]

Hi Tony,

Sorry I didn't get back to you about the skin, but if that's your Stonefly on the Yarra in the launching pages it looks like everything worked out perfectly - it looks great.

For the record, I potentially could have saved some money buying local (as ever in Australia, postage is a killer) but given my experiments trying to buy local sinew (I had to try three times from three different suppliers to find sinew that looked good and didn't snap) I was worried that I'd waste time and money buying something, finding it wasn't quite right, then buying a replacement.  

I bought the Aquacote finish online from Boatcraft Pacific in Sydney.  What did you use?

Cheers,

Jack