Bending a Coaming for a Greenland Kayak


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I glued the cockpit pattern from a Night Heron to some 3/4 I had a piece of schedule 40 PVC pipe that was long enough to hold the material. (24,468 bytes) A piece of yellow cedar, 7' long by 1.5 As the pipe heated up it started to deform. (23,910 bytes)
And distort some more. (23,658 bytes) The whole reason for steaming is to get the material to wrap around the small radius at the front of the coaming. (25,693 bytes) Three layers of yellow cedar steamed and bent in place with lots of clamps (26,590 bytes) I cut the ends at a slight diagonal so they would be slightly tighter. (21,633 bytes)
After epoxying the bent pieces together the result is an oval ring. Now it needs a lip to hold the sprayskirt. (26,326 bytes) Again, bending around the front is a problem. I didn't feel like steaming, so I have all 4 pieces of the coaming lip clamped together, backed up with a piece of plastic. The plastic keeps the grain from lifting and starting a split. (25,013 bytes) After dry fitting, I took the lip off, applied glue between the strips and clamped it back in place. I then slathered my excess glue underneath. (22,460 bytes)
     

I chose to make a larger than "traditional" cockpit for my kayak. If I had stuck with the traditional round cockpit of a Greenland style kayak I probably would not have need to steam it. The the sharp radius of the modern cockpit was a little too much to get my 1/8" thick yellow cedar around. I used 3 laminations. With the steaming I could have probably used one 3/8" thick piece but then I would have had figure out the joint. Here I just offset the joints. 2 layers may have been enough, but since the coaming will take much of the compression load when the boat is bridged between two waves, I figured a little more beef wouldn't hurt.

[Steaming the Ribs | Installing Stringers | Deck and Coaming | Sewing Skin]

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©2001 Nick Schade -All Rights Reserved.

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