Atelier Lalonde
Paul Lalonde's Weblog

It was a pretty busy weekend in the shop, but with only two small pieces of visual progress on the boat. I build the daggerboard case, knowing that it would be easier to fit it before the planking went on than after, and I cut my transom-to-keel joint. In non-visual progress I finally glued and screwed the apron to the keel - there’s no going back now.

The daggerboard case has been the fussiest bit of joinery to date - I really don’t want a leak there and to hear people talk there is no avoiding a leak there. The sides of the case are of vertical grained fir, with the rails and posts of local Garry oak that I had left over from putting together the apron. The inside of the case, and all the joined surfaces have been painted with red lead - you can see some in the top and again in the mortices that will eventually accept the frames that butt up agains the box. It’s kept watertight (touch wood) by lots of Sikaflex in the joins.

The case has two legs that sit at either end of the daggerboard slot at an angle (the slant of the box isn’t really obvious in the photos, but is about 10 degrees). Then the rails screw down through the apron and into the keel. I’ll be gooping a pile of sikaflex around it when I stand it in place. It’s all pre-drilled and dry-fitted, but I’ll wait until the planking is on before dropping the screws in permanently - I don’t want it getting in the way when clenching nails.

The last job was to get the transom set up on the molds. To do that I had to finish up the transom joinery. I decided to house the end of the apron in the transom - my friend Mark Reuten is just finishing up a similar boat and wan’t happy letting the apron show through at the transom - it’s yet another joint line that can be a little off. Housing it means it won’t be as visible, and I won’t have to re-cut my transom - my pattern had gone all the way to the deadwood instead of the apron.

A big step for me today. I finally got the keel of the small boat I’ve been building (Paul Gartside’s number 130 clinker dinghy that I wrote about earlier. I’ve been stalled for a while - it’s summer and I’ve been spending a lot of time kayaking instead of in the shop. But today I gave it a push, did the much-awaited shop cleaning, and got the molds up. I started fairing them as well, but that will take me a while longer to finish.

You’d think I had enough qajaqs… But I just had to build another. It was to travel to the World Traditional Games in Montreal next month, but they have been cancelled due to some funding errors. I don’t know if the Greenlanders will still be coming to visit, so our holiday may turn into a non-paddling vacation.

This qajaq is considerably flatter on the bottom than the previous ones I’ve built - I’m hoping that will help with my forward recovery handrolls, which have been eluding me. I might decide to leave this boat in Vancouver for wednesday night rolling practice.

Last spring I had to take down a black locust tree from my back yard. Much as it pained me to do so it has now given me three good projects: First, removing it made way for my workshop, second the large trunk will become frames for the sailing dinghy I’m building, and third, and to the point here, the locust provided the bending stock for the ribs in this new qajaq frame. These are a few shots of the splitting process that gave me the rough blanks for the ribs that I then band-sawed and planed to finished sizes:


I had two goals for this boat. I wanted a much flatter deck than my last qajaq, and I wanted to deal with the very stiff turning it exhibited. I did the first by dropping the masik even lower, and I think I’ve now reached a profile that’s more consistent with historical specimens. For the turning, I’ve added a fair bit of rocker as well as a little more volume in the bow, with the hope that when I lean it that that volume will come into play and shorten my waterline, something that didn’t happen in my last boat.


The boat is 18.25″ inches wide and 17′2″ long. The gunwales are spruce, the stringers red cedar, the ribs black locust. The keel stringer is random SPF I had on hand.


The spruce I had on hand wasn’t nearly long enough, at about 7′6″, but it was so clear and straight that it just wanted to be a set of gunwales. I ripped the plank into gunwale blank lengths I could resaw both gunwales from, and scarfed it with the traditional bird’s beak scarf, but instead of lashing I used epoxy to hold the scarfs firm. The gunwales bend perfectly fairly around the scarfs.

I started building a small boat recently. It’s a lapstrake (clinker) built, 12ft sailing dinghy. The plans are Paul Gartside’s #130 Clinker Dinghy that he originally designed for the Silva Bay boat building school. The plans are extremely detailed, and lead you through the process of developping and lofting the rabbet, bearding line, and back rabbet pretty well.

I’ve now pretty much finished the lofting, and have my molds ready. This weekend I’m heading out to a mill in Sooke to pick up some local Garry Oak to turn into the stem, some fir for the keel, and a pile of cedar for planking. I’m looking forward to seeing the little boat take shape.