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CAPE FALCON STUDENT BUILDS

Blog your build is a new way to share your build, get connected with other Cape Falcon Kayak owners and builders, and save some money at the same time.

Bloggers still purchase the online building course, but receive their plans for free. In exchange, every time they build, they post some photos and comments about their progress, along with an initial paddling impression and another one 6 months later.

If you’d like to join us and post your build, you can learn more here.

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capefalconbuilds

Took a bit of time this morning to get Jenny diale

Took a bit of time this morning to get Jenny dialed into her new Greenland kayak on the water. For Greenland commissions I like to fit the paddler to the bare frame and then also do an on the water check with the finished kayak. For both safety and performance, the fit on these kayaks needs to be perfect.
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A bit of a bittersweet moment for me because this is only the third time I’ve been in my Greenland kayak in the last decade. There aren’t words to describe how much I miss being on the water, but unfortunately the body doesn’t work so good these days.
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Jenny brought her F1 down with her and it’s in surprisingly good shape for being 8 years old. I asked her if she used it frequently and she said “I do, and I’m not nice to it!”.
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We did some impromptu Greenland roll practice, and what I noticed immediately was that if Jenny missed a roll she would re-orient herself and either scull herself back to the surface or roll up. This is a strong contrast to most sea kayakers who will go back to a set up position and try a couple more times before wet exiting.
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This is the magic of Greenland rolling, all the time spent practicing and playing underwater unwinds the brains’ natural panic responses and orients you to the three-dimensional underwater environment. By making rolling into a game instead of a chore the combat roll becomes almost an afterthought, which is what you want it to be.
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Believe it or not, Greenland rolling actually did more for my whitewater game than almost anything else. After five years off the water in my early 20s while I was rehabilitating a bad shoulder injury with a greenland paddle, I was shocked when I returned to technical creeking only to find that anytime I was getting trashed in a hole I was always halfway through some form of a Greenland roll and all I had to do was sweep one way or the other and I would come back up. I got a lot more oxygen that way and a lot less beat-downs.
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In addition to updating all the Cape Falcon video courses, we made a gorgeous step-by-step video while building Jenny’s kayak that’s gonna take a few months to get it edited. Enjoy the new boat Jenny.
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#greenlandkayak #kayaking #greenlandpaddle

Just some random shots from the recent Greenland k

Just some random shots from the recent Greenland kayak build. This project was a bit of an ass kicking because we used it to re-shoot the entire Greenland half of our skin-on-frame building course, which concludes an insane work push to update all of our courses this year.
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The kayak itself is from plate 67 in Harvey Golden’s book Kayaks of Greenland. It was collected in 1931 and interestingly it was originally commissioned by a European botanist. After paddling quite a few copies of various historic West Greenland kayaks I settled on this particular kayak for its classic lines, moderate size, fit, comfort, and relatively sea kindly manners (for a Greenland kayak.
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It has also been a good platform to expand upon with scaled up versions and even a stretched version, which isn’t something I would normally do but was a happy accident of a class where a student requested a scaled up version but then changed their mind after the longitudinals were already made. The no longer authentic stretched version of this is actually really nice to paddle.
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This particular boat was a custom build for a 135lb paddler so I reduced the depth by 3/8 of an inch and I also cut away the forefoot about a 1/4 inch beyond the traditional measurement which reduces hunting and weathercocking a little bit.
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Overall dimensions are: 16’4 long x 20” wide x 6 1/2” deep. I didn’t weigh this one but generally they come out about 27 pounds. I’ll try to post some on the water pictures tomorrow.
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#greenlandkayak #kajak #kayak #kayakbuilding #skinonframe #skinonframekayak #kayakbuilding #boatbuilding #woodenboat #traditionalboat #builtbyhand #traditionaltechniques #qajaq #handcrafted #woodworkingproject

Every aspect of the kayak building process reflect

Every aspect of the kayak building process reflects my life‘s focus on maximizing efficiency.
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The center seam is a simple whip stitch from bow to stern, and this plus cutting the exact overlap that I need before I begin lets me skin a kayak from start to finish in about four hours.
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I guess you could cross stitch back the other direction but I’ve never seen the functional advantage. To each his own but for me that’s two hours I could be spending paddling or drinking beer, not that I do much of either these days but that’s the philosophy at least!
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#skinonframe #kayakbuilding #boatbuilding #ballisticnylon #whipstitch #kayak #skinonframekayak

Here’s a classic “Brian” moment: I spent 15

Here’s a classic “Brian” moment: I spent 15 minutes this morning carefully drawing how you can get an entire kayaks worth of parts out of a nominal 2 x 6 for a customer in Ireland where western red cedar cost nearly as much as teak!
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Proud of my scale drawing complete with saw kerfs I fired it across the Atlantic just seconds before noticing that something wasn’t quite right....
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This is why Liz draws all the kayak plans.
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#boatbuilding #woodworking #measuretwice

Jenny built an F1 with me eight years ago and has

Jenny built an F1 with me eight years ago and has been using it as her primary sea kayak ever since. This year she decided to commission a West Greenland near-replica to explore traditional Greenland paddling skills.
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Because Jenny lives four hours away and also because of the pandemic we tried very hard to do the fitting remotely but there’s just no way that I can properly size a Greenland kayak to someone without them sitting in the frame. Tiny adjustments in masik height, position, foot brace, and cockpit ribs make a big impact on both safety and performance.
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Thanks for making the drive, Jenny. You can check out the results next weekend on the water.
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#greenlandkayak #greenlandkayaking #traditionalkayak #traditionalboat #kayak #skinonframe #skinonframekayak #boatbuilder #customboat #customfit #woodenboat

Doing some quick test bends on a batch of Oregon W

Doing some quick test bends on a batch of Oregon White Oak kayak ribs I’m sending to Australia. This is probably three times as flexible as you need the wood to be to actually build a skin on frame boat but it certainly makes things easier especially as a first time skin on frame builder.
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#skinonframe #bendingwood #bendingstock #bendingoak #steambending #steambendingwood #boatbuilding #kayakbuilding #woodworking #woodbending

Between filling orders, supporting students, build

Between filling orders, supporting students, building custom kayaks, working on several kayak video projects, and updating all the video courses and plans, things are a bit insane at Cape Falcon Kayak right now. I’m working on so many things at once that I literally don’t have time to snap photos or talk about any of it.
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While we flail to stay above water here at the shop, please enjoy this stock footage of nesting canoes from earlier this summer.
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#skinonframecanoe #capefalconkayak #canoe #boatbuilder #boatbuilderlife #skinonframe #canoeing #catamaran #sailingcanoe

Well heck...We are re-filming huge portions of the

In my classes I strongly encourage people to keep

In my classes I strongly encourage people to keep a clean shop. This reduces errors, speeds up the workflow, and just makes for an overall more enjoyable boat building experience.
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I am clearly setting an excellent example with my own shop.
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#behindthescenes #skinonframe #boatbuilder #woodworking

We just posted a super detailed video about skin o

We just posted a super detailed video about skin on frame durability on the Cape Falcon Kayak YouTube Channel. We discuss the pros AND the cons of skin on frame from a durability and longevity perspective and I tell quite a few entertaining stories of situations where I’ve seen skin boat to survive and a few when I’ve seen them fail. The photo above is the actual piece of rebar that scratched the canoe on the right. (Photographed at lower water obviously)
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We hit this thing so hard with the canoes catamaran together that Liz had to actually get out of her boat and into mine to get unstuck. Link to our channel in bio, and a direct link to the video in our stories.
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#skinonframe #boatbuilding #skinboats #skinonframeboats #skinonframekayak #skinonframecanoe

Making white oak ribs for kayak kit orders today.

Making white oak ribs for kayak kit orders today. It always seems kind of insane to me that I have to sell these for four bucks apiece, but the process really doesn’t give me much choice.
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We start out by driving a couple hours down to @zenaforestproducts where only two out of 100 boards are good enough quality to be set aside for bending oak. Of those only about 50% are clear enough for me, (cost is around $10 BF for 70% clear which translates into about 50% usable.) Back at the shop I feed the boards into the ancient but unstoppable (now) carbide toothed Parks planer to take them down to 1 5/16. Then I put a thin kerf circular saw ripping blade in my tablesaw, and use the sapwood to dial in my thickness and also to get the cut running straight along the grain. It would be so much easier if I could make these ribs 1/4 inch to match the mortise size but what I found over many years is that quarter inch ribs start to collapse pretty badly after about three years of owning the kayak. Bumping up to 17/64 goes a long way towards eliminating this problem although 9/32 is too thick and starts to create other problems with getting the shape right. So that’s where we get 17/64.
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Once I’m done ripping about 50 ribs the tablesaw is pretty well clogged I’m covered in fine dust and the blade needs to be removed and cleaned.
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Somewhere around 2 to 4 inches from the heart of the board I usually have to call it quits when I start running into bad grain or too many knots. Next I sort the ribs on the ground which usually ends up being about 50% usable 50% not usable. Although sometimes I get lucky and end up with a 70/30 split, And sometimes I get unlucky and end up with some pretty dismal yield if I happened to miss even a single pin knot or forgot to assess the edge of the board for slope at the mill.
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Next I clamp them together tightly usually throwing in 3-5 more than ordered, and then we wrap them in plastic to keep the moisture in.
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After that Liz does the hard part which is trying to figure out how to get 60 ribs and two kayak kits including spray skirts into a 4x20x35” box headed to Sweden! Total weight 41 lbs. The shipping is brutal but we do our best!

Liz getting the shots for the new kayak building c

Liz getting the shots for the new kayak building course updates.
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#boatbuilding #videoinstruction #videocourse #kayakbuilding #skinonframe #skinonframekayak #videoshoot

Nice light in the shop today. Building stuff, sho

Nice light in the shop today. Building stuff, shooting videos, and dreaming about the perfect 4wd adventure rig...
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#f1kayak #skinonframe #skinonframekayak #kayakbuilding #boatbuilding #woodworking #summerproject

Reshooting the rib bending videos for the kayak bu

Reshooting the rib bending videos for the kayak building course today. I think I was actually better at teaching this five years ago when I was on the tail end of 15 years of building these year-round with students.
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A dedicated video studio is really nice for good sound and clear camera angles though, so I think I will leave both the new and the old videos in the course.
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This GoPro shot would be so cool if we had a white floor!!
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#kayakbuild #kayakbuilding #f1kayak #skinonframe #steambending #bendingwood #woodworkingproject #boatbuilding #woodenboat #woodenkayak #buildyourownboat

Had the light sail rig (carbon masts and rip stop

Had the light sail rig (carbon masts and rip stop sails) out for some testing last night on the canoe catamaran. I was definitely cringing when a couple of the gusts approached 20 but so far neither of the carbon fiber masts have snapped. 5 mph in roughly 10mph of wind ain’t bad performance for 3 meters of canvas either. I probably won’t get to editing the GoPro footage until this winter but there were definitely some exciting moments when the biger gusts combined with the bigger powerboat wakes!
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The thing I like most about this set up is that even with the boats catamaraned together we can still steer with the sails within about a 45° window of downwind. For me this is a lot nicer than death gripping the tiller, and it also helps keep the speed up. The steering oar works but honestly we barely touch it.
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Also to preempt the inevitable questions about upwind sailing and leeboards, yes those things are absolutely possible with the addition of about 70 more hours of work and three or four more thousand dollars (if you want it to work well that is).
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By comparison, this cute little downwind rig that tucks out of the way when you’re not using it ends up costing about 200 bucks and about a day to build. Something that I feel like everyone has to learn for themselves is that if you really want sailboat performance you should build a sailboat and not ruin a perfectly good rowboat, kayak or canoe chasing after performance that you’re probably not gonna get anyways.
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#canoesailing #skinonframe #portlandoregon #flow #skinonframecanoe #sailing #catamaran #sailingcanoe #smallboat #woodenboat

Chopping tenons. The nice thing about skin-on-fram

Chopping tenons. The nice thing about skin-on-frame is that unlike most other types of woodworking the joints being a little bit sloppy is actually a good thing. Skin boats barely flex, but they do so with tremendous force and in that context furniture-grade joints risk failure. Not having to stress over every millimeter makes the whole process quick, easy, and beginner friendly.
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#boatbuilding #skinboats #skinonframe #skinonframeboatbuilding #kayakbuilding #mortiseandtenon #woodworking #joinery

I haven’t been posting to Instagram much lately,

I haven’t been posting to Instagram much lately, just fighting the battle against the metabolic illness that I live with and unfortunately not winning. Sometimes it takes me a whole day now to teach a simple 10 minute woodworking task.
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The physical side of having a metabolic disease, (not actually being able to use the boats that I make) isn’t exactly fun but humans are fairly adaptable creatures and we can learn to live in a variety of contexts. The bigger problem is just the effects on brain function. The bottom line is that the brain needs to be able to utilize glucose at a reasonable pace to work properly. I’ve been fighting the steady cognitive decline for a long time with nutrition, daily hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and what seems like every supplement known to man, but the reality is that sometimes I can’t make it past the first sentence in an instructional video before my brain function just crashes and I find myself staring at the camera wondering what the heck I’m talking about.
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The only positive thing is that research suggests that the neurons are still mostly intact so at least theoretically if metabolism could be restarted, brain function might be restored. With all the incredible things happening in science right now anything is possible but as things stand right now I’m probably going to have to accept that this just isn’t something I can do anymore. After teaching boat building for 20 years that’s a pretty hard thing to wrap my head around. Before that happens though, I’m committed to getting the boat building courses updated and the video quality as crispy as possible. So that’s what we’re doing this month. Building and re- documenting my two Greenland replica designs, and my F1. I’m also hoping to make some skin on frame related videos that I’ve always wanted to make for the YouTube channel. If I feel OK in the spring I’ll try to get the River Kayak design done as well, I put about 10 years into that boat so it would be nice to see it make it into production. So yeah that’s what’s going on with me today, back to work..
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#chronicillness #boatbuilding

Just a couple nice pictures from @widgeonwoodcraft

Just a couple nice pictures from @widgeonwoodcraft who just finished a pair of nesting double-paddle canoes. They are 14’ x 30” and 13’4” x 28.5”. Thanks for the pictures Jonathan and congratulations!
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#mycapefalconbuild #skinonframe #sofboatbuilding #skinoframecanoe #canoeing #doublepaddle #solocanoe #builtbyhand #buildyourownboat #paddleyourowncanoe #66canoe

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Brian Schulz
brian@capefalconkayaks.com
Call or text: 503 354 4939

4935 NE 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97211
Hours by appointment only

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