Since I sell many of the boats I make, I like to document them before I send them off into the world. While I like on-the-water shot, I often have need for studio style shots that don't have the distraction of a background. Typically a white or black background works well.

I use one end of my shop as a studio for these photos. I start out with a 40 foot long by 10 foot wide muslin backdrop that I clip to the garage door track. I put a pair of saw horses under the muslin and place the boat on the saw horses.

There is still a few spaces available at my Build-your-own S&G Night Heron Class at the WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine. This is a fun class at a great location, if you are looking for way to spend a week in Maine and come home with a fun boat, this is your chance.

"Schade’s kayaks are head-swivelingly beautiful"

I recently took on the task of designing and building a skin-on-frame kayak in the Greenland Inuit style. "Designing" a SOF kayak before building isn't really the traditional way. Typically they are built to traditional measurements based on an anthropometric measuring system i.e. using hands, hips, arm spans etc. as measurement units. These basic measurements may be tweaked based on the builders experience, making a wider/narrower or longer/shorter as needed by the user.

I have started sending out periodical newsletters through Constant Contact. Here is a copy of the first issues. Actually it is the second issue of my newsletter because I had sent one out via standard mail previous.

If you would like to sign up to receive the next newsletter, please fill out this form.

There are often situations where you need to trim a group of strips to follow a line, such as a chine or keel line. You could start by eye-balling the taper on each strip and hoping when you have finished installing them all that you have a smooth, fair line or, you could install a temporary strip then fit each strip one-at-a-time against that strip, but the easiest is to start by not doing any special fitting.

For those of you who have caught the Facebook bug, I've put up a Guillemot Kayaks Page. I've posted a few videos and will maintain an events calendar there. Feel free to become a fan and post comments.

SOLD

I have an excellent Canoe and Kayak Trailer for sale. It was made by MO Trailers and it is their Long Ranger model. While I really like this trailer it is too heavy for my poor little Subaru to tow. The trailer is extremely well built with heavy gauge welded steel construction, you can climb all over it load boats.

I like a good set of reference lines on all my forms. These are usually supplied by gluing the paper form patterns to the MDF and leaving them there. The patterns have the reference lines so everything is good. But I'm making the Nymph and it is symmetrical so being lazy I can make two sets of forms at the same time by stacking up two pieces of MDF and cutting them both at once. But, this means the paper pattern is only on one of the two copies.

I'm about to start building the first boats in my new shop. I'm going to exhibit at the Maine Boat Builder's Show and I need some boats to bring to it. I've decided to bring a Nymph canoe and while I am at it I figured I would build two. Unfortunately, I only have one strongback. So, yesterday I decided to build another. A strongback should be rigid and straight.