Wooden Kayaks: Building a Plywood Baidarka

February-March 2001

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Eric Schade

Panel cut-out plan

I have been building kayaks since 1986 and have built many styles. My brother Nick and I started by building strip kayaks out of necessity. At the time, we hadn't even seen an ocean kayak, nor could we afford to buy one. I've now built 25 boats of many designs, each with its own character.

In 1997, I started to design stitch and glue plywood boats. Many plywood kayaks have been rather boxy affairs but I tried to create plywood boats with more graceful lines. My first stitch and glue plywood design was called the Merganser, a Greenland-style kayak with a hard chine, moderate rocker and medium volume. I incorporated a graceful curving shear line to give the boat a unique look.

After the Merganser, I turned to the classic lines of the Aleutian Eskimo hunting kayaks which were called "Baidarkas" by the Russian fur traders of the 19th century. The Aleutian Baidarkas had a unique forked bow designed to improve the performance of the boat. The lower jaw of the bow is sharp and thin to provide a 'cutwater' which parts the waves. The upper jaw is a full-bodied shape to float the boat over waves. The effect is much like the hollow bows of some modern boats, a shape not easily made from skin on a wood frame. Baidarkas also have unusual shaped sterns which provide good tracking as well as buoyancy to the stern of the boat.

My Baidarka followed the classic lines as much as is possible, yielding a striking boat with friendly performance. I did the actual design on a computer so that I could calculate performance factors such as buoyancy, stability etc. and create patterns to cut the plywood.

I started the Baidarka by buying several sheets of 4mm okoume marine plywood. Other materials included mahogany planks for the cutwater and skeg, thin copper wire for "stitching" the panels together, epoxy for bonding and sealing, 3" wide fiberglass tape, 4 oz fiberglass cloth, some short strips of pine and long thin strips of hardwood for the coaming.

Hull ready for the deck

The panels required for the Baidarka were longer than the plywood sheets I bought, so there were two ways to make the panels. The first was to cut the plywood and then join it with butt blocks. The second was to pre-join the plywood by scarfing several sheets into long continuous sheets before cutting the panels; that is what I chose for my Baidarka.

I scarfed the plywood together by planing a taper onto the ends of the sheets to be joined, then glued the sheets together with the tapered ends overlapping. I ended up with two long, narrow, floppy sheets of plywood.

I cleaned up the glue joints on these with a belt sander then prepared to cut the panels for the boat.

I taped together the templates (five large sheets of paper) and checked that they were straight. I laid the template onto the plywood so that all the panels were on the plywood, and thumb-tacked the template down. Next I used a center punch to punch through the paper, marking the plywood every 2"-3" along the edges of the panels and 3/8"-1/2" from the edge on each 1 foot station line. After marking all the panels, I removed the pattern and used a long straightedge and a pencil to connect the dots, to draw the edges of the panels.

Next, I clamped plywood sheets together with the best sides facing each other in preparation for cutting out the panels. I used a saber-saw (hand-held power jigsaw) to cut just outside the lines of each panel. With the panels still clamped, I planed the edges to the line with a block plane.

I also drilled small holes along the edge so that I could wire the panels together to shape the boat.

In preparation for that step, I took four packages of copper wire and cut them in half with a pair of tin-snips, to get hundreds of 2"-3" arcs of wire.

Carving the ‘cutwater’

Starting with the bottom panels, I started wiring the panels together. I added two permanent and two temporary bulkheads to help shape the hull. I continued adding panels until the hull was complete. I carbed the cutwater from one inch thick mahogany, epoxied it into the bow, and carved a fixed skeg for the stern. These were shaped to fit into the plywood panels. I also carved simple decorations onto the cutwater and skeg which added character to the boat.

I checked that all the joints were tight and that the panels met cleanly. I made sure that the lines of the boat were fair, looking for humps and valleys in along the joints. I needed to adjust some of the joints with my block plane.

When I was happy with the shape, I used a syringe to inject a bead of epoxy into each joint to solidify the hull. I avoided getting epoxy onto the wires, so that I could remove them when the epoxy set up. I wired up the deck and epoxied the joint between the right and left halves but not the joint between the deck and hull. When the epoxy cured , I removed the deck and bulkheads to work on the inside of the hull.

I removed the wires, sanded off any drips and prepared to apply fiberglass to the inside of the hull. I thickened some epoxy with wood dust and squeegeed it into joints and wire holes to fill them. Then, I laid four ounce (4 oz.) fiberglass cloth into the hull and saturated it with epoxy. On the deck joint, I just used a narrow strip of fiberglass tape.

Cutting hatches

When the epoxy cured, I cleaned up the excess fiberglass, sanded any sharp edges and re-drilled the wire holes which I needed to hold the deck onto the hull. I then wired the deck onto the hull. I carefully marked the location of the hatches and cut them out using my saber-saw. I made sure I did not damage the piece I removed so that I could use it as a hatch-cover later.

I laid the kayak on one side and, reaching through the cockpit and hatches, made a fillet of thickened epoxy inside the deck-to-hull joint, then covered it with fiberglass tape saturated in epoxy. I screwed a brush to a long stick to get epoxy into the ends of the boat. When this cured enough not to drip, I did the other side. This made a very strong joint between the deck and hull.

I cut the wires, which held the deck in place, flush with the plywood. Then it was time to start sanding the Baidarka smooth. I concentrated on removing any drips, wire ends, splinters etc. while trying not to remove much plywood. I spent quite a bit of time shaping the skeg and cutwater to perfect the transition between them and the plywood hull. When I was satisfied, I sealed the entire boat with a coat of epoxy.

The Baidarka was now starting to look like a kayak. And the wood looked great! I sanded the boat once more to remove the smallest splinters and provide teeth for later epoxy work.

I also applied some wood veneer artwork to the boat. I cut a big Bald Eagle from walnut and ash-wood veneer and epoxied it to the forward deck. I taped a plastic bag over the inlay and used a vacuum pump to suck the veneer in place until the epoxy cured. I also used iron on veneer edging material from the lumberyard to create a light colored stripe along the shear line.

Cutwater in place

Eagle inlay

I then covered the entire hull with two layers of 4 oz. fiberglass cloth and epoxy, with extra layers on the bottom to protect the hull from rocks. I only gave the deck one layer of 4 oz. fiberglass because it is less likely to be damaged.

I made the cockpit by glueing short wood strips vertically around the inside of the cockpit cut out, smoothing the strips and covering them with fiberglass, then laminating strips of hardwood around the cockpit to make a lip.

When sanded smooth and coated with epoxy this made a very nice nautical looking cockpit. I used two contrasting colors of wood for the vertical strips and the laminated lip for looks.

The cockpit also includes a carved foam seat, floating backrest, hip plates and my own footbraces. The foot braces consisted of a movable bulkhead-like pedal assembly sliding on a rail, glued to the bottom and adjusted by looping a rope into hooks located on the rail between the paddler's legs.

The hatches were made waterproof by building a plywood lip inside the hatch for the cover to rest on and were sealed with a foam gasket. I used a knob and screw arrangement to hold the hatch closed. Based on a design by Jay Babina, the designer of the Outer Island kayak, I useda wooden bar with a nut in it to pull the hatch against the gasket.

This made a nice flush hatch with only a knob protruding. To aid in getting a good seal, I stiffened the hatch cover inside with wooden ribs.

Proof of the pudding

I attached the deck lines with flush deck fittings made of hardwood. These fittings held the bungee tie- downs in front and behind the cockpit and the grab lines at the bow and stern. I also made wooden lifting toggles for the ends of the boat.

After sanding and applying several coats of epoxy to fill the weave of the fiberglass cloth, the boat was smooth enough to varnish. I usually use about six coats of varnish but I was so excited that I only managed to get one coat on it before I took it for its sea trials.

At 19' long, 21" wide and weighing about 45 lbs, she was stable and tracked well. The long waterline length made her fast. Her low profile kept the wind from blowing her away and the forked bow kept her quite dry. Fun to build and fun to paddle!

Eric Schade lives in Stamford, Connecticut and is a mechanical engineer who has been building kayaks and canoes since 1984. He started out building with his brother Nick Schade (Guillemot Kayaks), then started Shearwater Boats in 1995. In the spring of 2000, Shearwater Boats joined forces with The Newfound Woodworks of Bristol, NH to produce kits for stitch and glue kayaks. Eric offers plans for three versions of the Baidarka: 16 ft, 17ft and 19ft as well as a 21ft double Baidarka.