My 13 year old (she's 14 now) daughter bugged me for nearly a year to let her build her own kayak. I figured that anyone that persistent should be given an opportunity to do what they long for -- so I picked up a Bear Mountain Magic kit for her and she's been busy sanding and epoxying ever since.
I should note that this is her project, not mine, and she's doing the build entirely on her own except for a few of the more difficult steps, where I've given her a hand.
One of the major things that we've done with this build is to modify the kit. The deck was too high for her -- the stock height of the deck would have required some serious padding to fit her -- the solution was to drop the deck height. We decided that lowering the deck 1 1/4" would put it at a height that would require some padding, but not so much to make it awkward (and would allow her to grow into the boat). We also decided to drop the rear of the cockpit coaming by an inch to make rolling a lot easier (she has a pretty good roll). A friend of mine who is into designing kayaks came out to the shop with tape measure in hand and for half an hour circled the kayak, taking measurements and then went home, put the numbers into his 3D Cad program and e-mailed me a set of four dimensions which I transferred to the panels, connected the marks with a batten and cut the panels. The modification turned out great and I think anyone but the designer of the boat would be hard pressed to tell that the original kit had been extensively modified.
Here's a photo of the drawings of the modifications -- you can see the difference at the front and rear of the coaming:
This photo shows the amount of the deck panel that was cut off:
Another shot showing the amount that the deck was lowered on the station form (prior to cutting):
This photo shows the boat after the deck panels were stitched together:
And finally, this photo shows the modified rear cockpit recess:
I told her that she should do something to the boat to personalize it -- the idea she came up with was to put glitter on the deck. It'll be very subtle (no low-rider car style here) and she'll also be doing some glittered starfish on the deck. Here's what the starfish will look like (this was our test starfish on a bulkhead):
Y'know, I get an enormous amount of pleasure building boats, but to have my daughter building her own kayak is quite a treat. She loves paddling and we've done many, many trips over the last few years. I feel very lucky to be able to have found something that the two of us can do together.
Her entire build is being documented in a journal here:
http://www.westcoastpaddler.com/buildin ... p?album=17
And a discussion about her build is in our forums:
http://www.westcoastpaddler.com/communi ... php?t=1922
I should note that this is her project, not mine, and she's doing the build entirely on her own except for a few of the more difficult steps, where I've given her a hand.
One of the major things that we've done with this build is to modify the kit. The deck was too high for her -- the stock height of the deck would have required some serious padding to fit her -- the solution was to drop the deck height. We decided that lowering the deck 1 1/4" would put it at a height that would require some padding, but not so much to make it awkward (and would allow her to grow into the boat). We also decided to drop the rear of the cockpit coaming by an inch to make rolling a lot easier (she has a pretty good roll). A friend of mine who is into designing kayaks came out to the shop with tape measure in hand and for half an hour circled the kayak, taking measurements and then went home, put the numbers into his 3D Cad program and e-mailed me a set of four dimensions which I transferred to the panels, connected the marks with a batten and cut the panels. The modification turned out great and I think anyone but the designer of the boat would be hard pressed to tell that the original kit had been extensively modified.
Here's a photo of the drawings of the modifications -- you can see the difference at the front and rear of the coaming:
This photo shows the amount of the deck panel that was cut off:
Another shot showing the amount that the deck was lowered on the station form (prior to cutting):
This photo shows the boat after the deck panels were stitched together:
And finally, this photo shows the modified rear cockpit recess:
I told her that she should do something to the boat to personalize it -- the idea she came up with was to put glitter on the deck. It'll be very subtle (no low-rider car style here) and she'll also be doing some glittered starfish on the deck. Here's what the starfish will look like (this was our test starfish on a bulkhead):
Y'know, I get an enormous amount of pleasure building boats, but to have my daughter building her own kayak is quite a treat. She loves paddling and we've done many, many trips over the last few years. I feel very lucky to be able to have found something that the two of us can do together.
Her entire build is being documented in a journal here:
http://www.westcoastpaddler.com/buildin ... p?album=17
And a discussion about her build is in our forums:
http://www.westcoastpaddler.com/communi ... php?t=1922
