Chesapeake 17 Kayak - Cutting out the Cockpit Coaming and the Coaming spacers - January 30, 2015

If you buy a kayak kit all the pieces come cut out and ready to assemble but since I'm working form plans I need to cut out or in some cases build the pieces myself. Today I laid out the pattern of the cockpit coming rim and the spacers and cut them out.

Above the plan with the full size drawing is taped to a 6 mm sheet of okoume. I used push pins to transfer the drawing to the okoume and then with a very flexible piece of wood I connected the dots to complete the drawing on the okoume.

I did the same thing with the bulkheads, notice that in the plan the forward and aft bulk heads are drawn one on top of the other. In the image above I'm transferring the aft bulk head to the okoume. You can tell this because the green push pin is in the out side right corner of the picture and there are some clear push pins on the left side where the notch for the sheer clamp will be located.

Above is the cockpit coaming rim drawn on the okoume and one of the coaming spacers. The hole is where I will begin to cut out the inside of the cockpit coaming rim.Below are the blukheads drawn on the okoume.

I decided to draw the coaming spacer only once and then use the one I cut out as a pattern to draw the other five. Yes five, because it's 6 mm okoume the plan calls for six coaming spacers, three on a side.

After transferring all the drawings to the okoume it was late. So I took all the clamps off the side panels where I had glued on the sheer clamps two days prior. There were some spots that had epoxy on them.

A couple of stray spots of thickened epoxy above and  below.

I sanded these out even though they are on the inside. I want the boat to look as good as it possibly can when I'm finished and sanding these spots off now is the thing to do. The next time I build a boat I'll be more careful to avoid having to do this.

Above is one more stray spot of thickened epoxy. While sanding it off I also sanded the fiberglass tape I used to make my butt joint. Then I sanded the other put joints smooth too.