So tonight's project was to redo the steering arms.  This was the original design, but I made a mistake and put them backwards.  (You'll see that in the earlier pictures.  My bad.)  I had to add an inch to them anyway so they would look better coming out from under the piece of wood.  

Took this much to figure out I needed a 67 degree angle for the part that holds the rudder to the kayak.  I don't know what to call it so I'll call it "The Rudder Holder Upper", or "Fred".  Don't know yet.

Tomorrow night I'll put that together and figure out how it's going to attach to the kayak.  Thinking about passing aluminium bars through the hull and dye the ends to screw it together.  

But enough for tonight.

Later.

Yup.  I'm doing it.  You can now call it the iYak.  It's getting a sound system.  Super pumped.

Ok.  So today I turned the Bristol board into wood.  Now I just have to get epoxy and to seal it up and I'm going to put fibre glass on the rudder, but just from the bottom of the "wheel" to the bottom of the rudder.  Fun times.  I'm using a hinge as pivot point for now, but that may change.  Not too sure about that.  I think I might add some weight to the bottom of the rudder so it will have some added weight to keep it down while sailing.  We'll see.  With the pin there I can replace the rudder with different designs later.  I saw some crazy designs on youtube that look pretty interesting.  Here's the link.

MobyKraft

So the last couple of nights was rudder design.  This meant rulers, compasses, pencils, erasers, and Bristol board.  The design is right now I just need to get some aluminium and some Teflon bushings for the rudder to move smoothly against the side arms.  I know this doesn't make much sense, but I hope the picture explain it better than I.

Also the back handle will probably require a redesign due to the fact that you can't really use it wile the rudder is in the up position and both foot pegs are even with each other.  If the handle is kept where it is the rudder will have to lay down the starboard side with the foot pegs uneven from each other.  I think this might have to be the case, because the handle is in a great position for easy one handed movement of the kayak.

Really if I'm moving the kayak it doesn't really matter if the foot pegs are even or not.  I won't be in it.

Rudder dimensions are 2' long and 4" wide, using 1/8" plywood.  Now what colour to paint it.
The steering arms will be made of the same plywood with aluminium angle for the 90 or the whole arm piece will be aluminium.  Haven't decided yet.  It'll probably be aluminium.  The whole thing might be.  We'll see.

Supper is ready.  More later.

So far I've built a frame to hole my kayak while working on it.  I made it out of 2x4's and used canvass as a sling to hold it.  It's on swivil casters with brakes so I can move it around my dining room and lock it in place with ease.  Yes you read right.  It's in my dining room.  Next step.  Rudder design.  I will be building it myself and will be basing it off of two YouTube videos.  Here are they're links.

Video 1

Video 2

Hello My name is Joe and I'm putting my stitch and glue Guillemott design kayak through a refit.  I plan on adding a rudder a mast for sailing, a couple of pontoons on the side, and most importantly a cup holder.  I've had the idea for the last couple of years and so I starting searching on the interweb recently and found a site that got the ideas rolling.  It is www.triaksports.com.  I will be building my own, because I already have a kayak and I like the challenge.  There is no greater joy than sailing/paddling/motoring in a boat that you have built.  This blog will chronicle my adventures in amateur boat building and hopefully help others, and myself, in this project.  I hope you have a very interesting read and enjoy this blog.