Skip to content

Home

Menu

STUDENT BUILDS BLOG
BLOG YOUR BUILD
ADD YOUR BOAT TO THE MAP
CAPE FALCON KAYAK MAIN SITE
BLOG LOGIN

Search for:

Search for:

Close search bar

LPB Kayak Builds

Berend’s LPB build, Leiden (The Netherlands)

Thorsten‘s LPB Kayak & Greenland Paddle

Alan’s LPB and Greenland Paddle

2 new builds in Sweden !!

Search for:

Jump to:

All Builds
66 Canoe
F1 Kayak
F2 Kayak
LPB Kayak
West Greenland Kayak
East Greenland Kayak

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.

Follow Us

YouTube
Instagram
Facebook

On Instagram

capefalconbuilds

For the 3rd post in my short series talking about

For the 3rd post in my short series talking about my 23 year battle with ME/CFS (see previous posts) I want to pick up where we left off and review the current science:
.
As I said in the first post we don’t yet know exactly what causes ME/CFS but the downstream results are circulatory issues, neuropathy, brain inflammation, and energy pathway disruption. There are measurable problems with every potential energy source including oxygen, sugar, fat, and protein. Energy (ATP) levels are relatively stable but at a much lower level than normal. Life is sustained but cellular repair, detoxification, bile acid, hormone, and neurotransmitter synthesis are all compromised. The resulting chronic systemic energy deficit leads to problems in the liver, heart, kidneys, intestines, skin, and brain.
.
The heart beats slower and less forcefully, the small blood vessels of the body are chronically constricted, the red blood cells themselves are too stiff and have difficulty squeezing through the capillaries, and finally overall blood volume is approximately 1 pint lower than normal. All of these factors combined create serious circulatory issues, especially to the brain.
.
As with all diseases where basic energy pathways are compromised the energy hungry nervous system suffers. For most people (myself included) the smallest nerves that form the end interface between the brain and the rest of the body are dead or dying. Additionally the brain faces a unique chronic inflammatory issue resulting in extensive white matter loss and intense subjective discomfort.
.
As much as these chronic hypo-metabolic issues place immense stress on the body it’s actually the acute hyper-metabolic phase of the illness that makes it so unpleasant. For a person with ME/CFS ANY amount of exercise leads to immediate kidney dysfunction, increased vasoconstriction, brain inflammation, and a multitude of other systemic exacerbations. This is opposite from the normal physiological response and it’s pattern is unusual even among rare metabolic diseases. So those are the current scientific findings, in the next post I’ll talk about what it’s like to actually live with the disease.
.
.
#mecfs

I was going to resume talking about the kayak buil

I was going to resume talking about the kayak build today but after some of the responses to me sharing my battle with ME/CFS on Monday (why I’m working on my hands and knees) I realized I have a unique opportunity here to give some visibility to this devastating but mostly invisible disease. So for the remainder of this kayak build (about 5 more posts) I’m going to write a short series essays relating to the illness.
.
Today I want to talk about history. If you read yesterday’s summary and are wondering why you didn’t know about a disease that is twice as common as Multiple Sclerosis and often much more severe, the complex answer is well illustrated by a very specific incident from ME/CFS history. In 1970 two psychiatrists examining NOTHING but 15 year old notes from other doctors published a paper which claimed that there was little organic evidence of disease and categorized ME/CFS as “mass hysteria”.
.
For reasons that I think have a lot to do with the fact that most patients were women, this utterly unsupported and unscientific view of ME/CFS spread through the public and the medical community like a cancer and an entire generation of doctors was raised to believe chronic fatigue syndrome was a psychosomatic disorder.
.
It was commonly believed the disease wasn’t serious because available diagnostic tests didn’t show abnormalities, which would be like saying that someone in 1850 couldn’t have had a heart attack because the EKG had not been invented yet.
.
Of course there were always dissenting doctors and researchers but the general tide of opinion led to a paucity of research funding and an epidemic of patient abuse that continues into the present day. Cementing the lack of awareness was the name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome itself, which connotates a vague impression of someone who needs to take more B vitamins, not someone with devastating neuropathy, and brain and spinal cord inflammation.
.
Driven by recent increases in research funding, significant pathology in ME/CFS patients is now well established. Unfortunately education about these advances has been insufficient to broadly shift outdated public and clinical attitudes towards the disease.

First day of kayak building on the floor was chall

First day of kayak building on the floor was challenging. For anyone who is wondering about the point of this exercise, I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), which is an illness with a common and a medical definition. The common understanding is someone who is really tired all the time for no apparent reason. The medical definition now includes disruption of primary energy pathways, chronic inflammation of the brain, extensive small fiber neuropathy, and seven different circulatory system impairments.
.
The root cause of all this is still not fully understood, but the net effect is a devastating chronic illness that leaves most people, myself included, a shadow of who we were before we got sick. ME/CFS disability spans a spectrum from bedridden with a feeding tube, to poor sleep, fatigue, and mild cognitive issues. I fall somewhere in the middle of the curve. It’s roughly equivalent to the misery of having a bad flu, for 12 years.
.
My personal coping strategy is learning everything I can about the latest science and trying anything I can think of to make things better. Everything from solidly conventional approaches to way far out there alternative stuff.
.
This week I’m taking a hydraulic approach. According to scientists one of the biggest problems with the illness is just dismal blood flow to the brain. This happens from a combination of large vessel dilation, small vessel constriction, low blood volume, slow heartbeat, and reduced cardiac output. I’ve noticed over the years that I become severely sick if I have to stand up all day but feel a lot better if I’m working on my hands and knees. This might be because cardiac output increases by 3 L per minute in a prone position and skeletal movement helps pump blood.
.
So far I’ve resisted setting up my workshop this way for practical reasons, but this week seemed like the right time to finally run the experiment. All I can say for now is that working on the floor was slow and frustrating, but I’m gonna stick with it for as long as it takes to tell if it helps.
.
.
.
#woodworking #boatbuilding #kayakbuilding #mecfs #chronicillness #chronicfatigue #andnowforsomethingcompletelydifferent

With yesterday’s surprise planer repair complete

With yesterday’s surprise planer repair complete, I’m starting work on a kayak that I don’t build very often: my Long Pointy Boat design. A surprisingly successful marriage of the performance principles of my F1 stern with the general shaping concept of a racing kayak bow, the LPB offers increased top speed and stroke ergonomics at the expense of cruising speed efficiency. (More wetted surface = more drag.)
.
It’s no secret that I greatly prefer shorter kayaks for reasons of portability, weight reduction, material availability, wind/wave/surfing performance, and less drag at cruising speeds; but I realized last week that if I’m gonna do any more development on my sail system I need to see how it will perform on both of my modern kayak designs.
.
I’ve also got a couple of students who are thinking of building this model, one for a grueling multi-day race and the other for an extended trip down the Yukon River, so I felt like it was time to put one together so I could re-familiarize myself with how it feels in different situations.
.
I’m trying a somewhat weird experiment this week of working on my hands and knees on the floor. I wish I could say that this had something to do with my interest in traditional Japanese carpentry but the truth is that the fairly serious medical condition I live with is making it harder and harder to stay on my feet. I may or may not talk more about that in a future post. For now I’ve dusted off my half-scale LPB model and hung it up for inspiration while I build.
.
.
.
#skinonframe #kayakbuild #woodworking #boatbuilding #newboat #kayak #inprogress #woodworkingproject

$*#%! . #woodworking

$*#%!
.
#woodworking

We spent the morning shooting video updates to the

We spent the morning shooting video updates to the finishing section for our Free Greenland Paddle Building Course on the Cape Falcon Kayak website.
.
I went into a lot of detail about the pros and cons of various finish strategies including updated instructions for applying Rubio Monocoat, and also a more traditional burnishing technique using pure tung oil that was recommended to me by a paddle builder from New Zealand. We’ll be uploading the new video to the course later today.
.
People often ask me why I don’t write a book about skin-on-frame building, and honestly I wish I could because writing is MUCH easier for me than video. The problem with a book though is that it’s a snapshot of knowledge which is kind of the opposite of the whole Cape Falcon Kayak philosophy, which is the EVOLUTION of knowledge.
.
Video teaching is so much harder than I ever could’ve imagined, but it does let me rapidly incorporate new ideas to the process. Every time I come up with a better way to do things or I get a really good idea from a student I can immediately add it to the updates section of the course and then when enough of these updates accumulate I will re-shoot various videos. I like to think of it as sort of a digital village where a lot of the design and process evolution that used to happen linearly over time, now happens laterally over space.
.
.
.
#greenlandpaddle #boatbuilding #skinonframe #videoproduction #design #process #instructionalvideo #boatbuildinginstruction

Just posted a video to the Cape Falcon Kayak YouTu

Took the sail set up out for some testing on a rai

Took the sail set up out for some testing on a rainy afternoon. The goal here isn’t so much a performance assessment as just evaluating the functionality of the rigging. I ditched the various in-line tensioners that I had bought to try to make the stay attachment and tensioning quicker. It’s a good idea in theory but every one of them had some unworkable flaw. Right now it’s just set up with taut line hitches, although I’m gonna have to find a tensioning knot that’s equally quick to tie and adjust but a little bit more secure.
.
Sailing a kayak is tricky because by definition you’re doing it in rough water, you have to juggle the paddle and the sheet, capsize is much more likely in general and self rescues are much harder.
.
Much like larger boat sailing, rescue should be at least possible but most of your safety margin really rests on handling the boat well. Little things like the momentary tangle between the sail hold down bungee and the sheet you see here can be a huge problem when you’re a mile offshore and it’s blowing 20.
.
I like the clean simplicity of the set up so far, although I still need to work out the sheet cleat. I like this to be releasable with the blind swipe of a hand in an emergency and for various reasons the open clam cleats that I use on my canoe aren’t going to work here.
.
I need to figure out how far forward I can mount this rig before the stay angle becomes too acute, which unfortunately is going to involve perforating one of my new boats. After that I’ll build three or four masts and a handful of different sail shapes to experiment with the aspect ratio and see if it makes a difference.
.
.
.
#boatbuilder #kayaksailing #kayaksail #sailtest #saildesign #rigging #kayaking #boattest #prototype

The challenging part of my work here is finding ti

The challenging part of my work here is finding time amidst the endless stream of administrative responsibilities to actually do product development. This month I’m finally coming back around to updating the canoe sail design and making it interchangeable with my kayaks.
.
The basic idea here is a simple flat cut crosswind/downwind sail rig that a person without a lot of technical skill can build for a few hundred dollars in a weekend. The canoe part of this is pretty well dialed in and has been in the canoe plan for a few years, so now we just need to sort out the kayak side of things.
.
Kayak sailing is inherently very dangerous so the important thing here is making sure that everything works as perfectly as it possibly can.
.
As usual this process is a lot more perspiration than inspiration. Basically bang out a quick prototype and then just lay siege to the problem, bleeding money and time testing every potential component I can get my hands on and as many configurations as possible to figure out how I can get the best performance from the simplest possible arrangements.
.
If I’ve done my job right the finished product should be pretty boring, something simple that just works.
.
.
.
#design #prototyping #boatbuilder #boatdesign #kayaksail #canoesail #productdevelopment #saildesign #kayakdesign

F1 kayak build time lapse, Day 7. . Sound on and d

F1 kayak build timelapse, Day 6. . I like to tell

F1 kayak build timelapse, Day 6.
.
I like to tell people that building a skin on frame kayak is quick and easy but that’s not entirely accurate. After 20 years there’s one part of the process that I still struggle with every single time: rigging the deck lines.
.
The crux of the problem is that I want the rock solid connection of the lines being tied through the gunwales on the inside, but I also don’t want them to leak where they penetrate the skin.
.
My answer to this problem is to burn much smaller holes in the skin than the underlying holes in the gunwales and then spend the next 90 minutes cursing my way through feeding the large rounded leather straps through those tiny holes. The really fun part is when you’re grabbing the tip inside with the pliers and pulling with the full grunt force of your arm and the tip breaks and your hand smashes into the other side of the inside of the kayak. Ouch.
.
This is a problem that gets worse every year because I’m continually reducing the size of the hole while simultaneously increasing the size of the straps, and my latest invention which makes these almost leak proof even with no sealant is to actually burn the hole offset from the underlying hole in the gunwales.
.
The net benefit of this frustration however is that you can rescue, tow, or carry by any line on deck with minimal leaks. Apologies to my students for the bruised knuckles!
.
.
.
#kayakbuild #seakayak #skinonframekayak #decklines #rigging #skinboat #diyproject #buildyourown #madebyhand #handcrafted #buildyourownboat #quarantineproject #boatbuilder

As usual, don’t miss the music here! Pausing fro

As usual, don’t miss the music here! Pausing from the kayak build for a moment, Liz and I rallied the holiday spirit on Wednesday and MADE a Christmas tree out of boat building scraps. The base is leftover birch ply from rowing outriggers. The trunk is rejected oar shaft stock, and the branches are reject ribs from the challenging North Alaskan replica kayak build we did last year.
.
Happy holidays, more kayak building tomorrow.
.
.
.
#merrychristmas #woodworkingproject #diychristmastree #madefromscraps #repurposed #diyproject #christmascraft #boatbuilder #happyholidays #timelapse

F1 kayak build timelapse, Day 5.
.
As usual, don’t miss that sound button. Here I’m coating the nylon with 2 part polyurethane. It’s not a perfect finish but the confluence of price, durability, low toxicity, and ease of application creates a pretty incredible overall value. I put it on in 4 hours and that’s literally all I have to do until the skin wears out about 5000 paddling miles later. That’s supersonic speed compared to any other finish.
.
Just like every finish there are a few critical details that you can’t get wrong when applying this product otherwise you’ll ruin your boat (which is why I teach classes) but once you know what you’re doing, it’s pretty great stuff.
.
.
.
#finish #boatbuilding #timelapse #skinonframeconstruction #skinonframekayak #boatbuildingtips #buildyourownboat #handmade #handcrafted #kayakbuilding #makeyourown #diy #buildaboat

F1 kayak build time lapse, Day 4, part 2. . Shifti

F1 kayak build time lapse, Day 4, part 2.
.
Shifting gears from jazz to swing for this one so don’t miss that sound button!
.
Whether I stitch the fabric on wet or dry just depends on the which fabric I’m working with. I like this particular fabric because I can stitch it on dry and then wet it down afterwards and it shrinks drum tight as it dries. A little bit of ironing on deck takes care of any residual wrinkles and helps set the color.
.
Surprisingly, I invented a new dye color for this one that I really like. I think I’ll call it sweet potato. Give me a few days and I’ll get it photographed and put it for sale on the site with all of our other custom dye colors.
.
.
.
#fabricdye #boatbuilding #kayakbuild #skinonframeconstruction #stitching #kayak #smallboat #buildityourself #diyproject #buildyourownboat

F1 kayak build timelapse day 4, part 1. Don’t f

F1 kayak build timelapse day 4, part 1. Don’t forget that sound button, these bass grooves aren’t going to listen to themselves!
.
The first kayak I ever skinned 20 years ago took me 14 hours and left my hands bleeding. The system I was following seemed unnecessarily complicated so in true Cape Falcon Kayak fashion I simply removed all the extra steps and developed the method I use now, which takes me about 4 hrs and 8 for a first time builder.
.
The fastest I’ve ever done it was when one of my students accidentally put fabric dye on a different students boat thinking it was his! She didn’t like that color so the skin came off, I cracked a beer and cranked the music and 2.5 hours later we had a new one on. Not my favorite way to end the longest day of the class!
.
.
.
#skinboat #skinonframeconstruction #woodandcloth #stitching #kayak #kayakbuild #handstitched #builtbyhand #quarantineproject #buildyourown #woodenframe #skinkayak #woodworkingproject

F1 kayak time lapse, end of day 3. . The biggest d

F1 kayak time lapse, end of day 3.
.
The biggest driver of efficiency in my kayak building system comes from the years I taught in person. At first, these weeklong kayak building marathons ran upwards of 11 hours per day, but over the years I learned how to optimize every part of the process until we were able to build 6 kayaks in six 8 hourdays.
.
As an efficiency junkie, it was neat to see how tweaking the variables impacted production time. Once every ounce of time was shaved off the mechanical part of the process, I focused on the human side of things.
.
I learned that for every 10 feet of distance between the workbench and the student an HOUR of time is lost each day. I learned that past 5 pm productivity per unit of time drops by HALF. I learned that making sure people are eating and drinking and not feeling rushed increases productivity by 1/2 hour per day.
.
All this adds up to keeping individual days below 9 hrs, which is the threshold where fatigue effects start to impact the following day’s work. When it all came together it was like a woodworking symphony. I don’t teach in person anymore but my kayak building systems live on in our online video classes.
.
.
.
.
#kayak #kayakbuilding #woodworkingproject #boatbuildingclasses #lashing #woodworking #woodenframe #boatbuildingproject #traditionaltechniques #handbuilt #diyproject

More work on the F1 kayak. This is the end of Day

New F1 kayak building day, same chill music. . On

New F1 kayak building day, same chill music.
.
On day 2 of the build I prep and bend in the ribs, tie the keel on, and attach the stems at either end. This is usually a half day of work for me and a full day of work for first time students.
.
.
.
#timelapse #boatbuilding #steambending #bendingwood #kayakbuild #woodworkingproject #buildaboat #diyproject #nuildityoirself #bendingoak #kayak #skinonframekayak

Load More... Follow on Instagram

Contact

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

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

Follow Us

YouTube
Instagram
Facebook

Newsletter

Sign up to find out about new classes, projects, videos, plans, and kits, and new and used boats for sale.

Copyright © 2021 Cape Falcon Kayak.

All Builds
66 Canoe
F1 Kayak
F2 Kayak
LPB Kayak
West Greenland Kayak
East Greenland Kayak

Scroll to top