William R. Watt wrote:
Brian Nystrom ) writes:


It's real simple Bill, so perhaps even you can understand it. The price
of a stripper kayak kit that includes seat parts, footpegs, deck rigging
and finishing supplies is $1200-$1400 (based on the prices from Newfound
Woodworks) plus shipping, which isn't cheap since they must be shipped
by truck. Unless one is already a woodworker, you can figure on adding
several hundred dollars for the cost of tools and the materials to build
a strongback, sawhorses, etc., to the cost of the kit an supplies. That
brings your your total hardware and supplies cost up to $1500~$2000.

You are overstating the cost here. You don't have to be a "woodworker",
merely a homeowner, to have an electric drill (with sanding disk) and an
electric jigsaw or circular saw (either will do for cutting curves on thin
plywood.

Excuse me, but were we not talking about kits for building strippers?

The idea of using a sanding disk on an electric drill is laughable and
you know it. It's the fastest way to destroy your work.

You can cut your own strips as well if you want with a tabel saw.

So what happened to the kit idea? Is that out the window now?

And you don't even need a table saw. All you have to do is cut a slot in a
piece of plywood and mount a circular saw upside down in it. It's common
practice among beginner boatbuilders. I've done that twice. I don't own a
table saw. I have not bought any extra tools for boatbulding. Nor would
most others.

That's really funny, considering what boatbuilders actually do rather
than your hypothetical scenario. How many clamps do you figure the
average homeowner has lying about? A block plane? Japanese pull saw?
Chisels? Yes, it's possible to build a boat on a shoestring, but that's
not what most builders do. Again, you know this.

In fact I saved money buying the few tools that I have by
doing odd jobs around the house myself instead of paying someone else to
do them

I do too, but you and I are not typical of the American public. Most
people can barely do more than change a lightbulb. It's sad, but true.

which leads us to the next item, labour.

When you factor in the 200-300 hours of labor involved in building a
stripper (typical numbers derived from what hobbyist builders report on
kayak building sites), even if you only value your time at $10/hour
(slave wages), you're looking at a real cost of $3500-$5000 for your
first boat. Subsequent boats will be somewhat cheaper since you now have
the tools and strongback, but that's assuming that you build more than one.

Oh sure, I guess you pay yourself $10 an hour for labour. How do you do
that? Take $10 out of your left hand pocket and put it in your right hand
pocket? No, you save yourself the cost of paying someone else to build
your boat. Its a savings not an expense. First you write boatbuilding is
an act of love, now your write you want to pay yourself for it,
which makes you some kind of boatbuidling whore. Maybe you should rethink
your motivation. I build my boats to save money, as do
other amateur boatbuilders. Thats' what "amateur" means, "unpaid". So
don't try and add "self payment" to the cost of anyone's building his or
her own boat. You save the cost of labour, period.

As usual, you've come up with somthing totally absurd to try to cloud
the issue. The point is that a person's time is worth something. The
time required for building a strip boat is not inconsequential. If you
consider it recreation (a labor of love), fine. If it takes time that
could be used to earn a living, that's a whole different story.

Considering that you can buy a new 'glass boat for ~$2500 or a used one
for as little ~$1000 (I've bought several at that price), where is your

buying a used boat has noting to do with comparing the cost of buying a
new boat or bulding it yourself. it still cost 1/3 less to build a
stripper canoe or kayak compared to buying it off the shelf.

How many people would be willing to shell out $5000 for a strip built
boat in the first place? by your rationale, one might be able to save
tens of thousands of dollars by building their own yacht. But if you
can't afford one in the first place, what's the point?

One minute you're talking about building in the cheapest manner
possible, then you're talking about the most expensive boats available.
This discussion started out being about saving money by building vs.
buying a COMMERCIAL boat. You keep taking that discussion off on
unrelated tangents.

savings, Bill? You accuse me of imaginative, yet it's quite obvious that
your "1/3 savings" figure is wishful thinking at best. I enjoy building
boats, but I'm under no illusion that it saves me any money. The main
reason for building a boat (other than the recreational aspects of
woodworking) is that I get exactly what I want.

you have not shown that buying a boat costs less than 50% more than
building it yourself. I'm actually quite amazed at the strange ideas about
money expressed above. Do really beleive what you wrote?

What I believe is that you've got very little grasp of reality. You keep
changing the subject in an attempt to avoid admitting that you're wrong.
You can buy commercial boats for less than the cost of a kit plus the
tools and materials necessary to build it. Building takes time, which is
a valuable commodity for most people. You've offered means of "saving
money" which are simply a trade off for increased building time and
difficulty, which makes building even less of a possibility for most
people. Hell, Greenlanders built their boats for centuries using
driftwood and tools made from stone and bone. That was about as cheap as
you can get, but it took a LONG time to build a boat. Perhaps you're
retired and don't consider your time to be worth anything, but most
people value their time.

Yet boat builders are still a MINUSCULE percentage of the total number
of kayakers. You really need to get a grip on the reality of the market.
To put some perspective on it, I belong to a club with over 400 members
in it. Out of those, I know of 9 (2.25%) who have built boats. That's
among paddlers who are dedicated enough to join a club. We represent
only a small fraction of the total kayaking population, the majority of
whom paddle plastic recreational boats. Based on that, I think it's safe
to say kayak builders represent well under 1% of the kayaking
population. Is that specific enough for you???

how did you get off on this rant? what we are discussing is the
possibility of custom designing a plywood or stipper kayak, and that it
cost no more to custom design one of these than to build from one set
plan. try to stay with the tour.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! You go off on a tangent
whenever it suits you. What a hypocrite!

The point is that the market for plans and kits is small. People who
produce them apparently don't think that your idea of custom plans and
kits at bargain basement prices is economically feasible. Since they're
in the business and you're not, I'll defer to their wisdom.

I've read
somewhere some Brian Nystrom guy built his own first boat at one time.

You read wrong. I built my third boat. My first two were commercial boats.

the first boat you built was the first boat your built, not the first
boat you owned.

So your first comment was pointless. I built a boat, then another and
another. I plan to build a few more, because I enjoy it and I can build
what I want. So what? I've already stated that I don't do it under the
illusion of saving money.

I've already addressed this fallacy above. Either it's a "labor of love"
and you don't count the labor cost, or you're not saving anything. You
can't have it both ways, Bill.

your fallacy. your imaginary cash flow.

You need to get a grip on reality, Bill.

Where does this come from? I don't see any reason why a chine has to
cause turbulence. Lapstrake boats are not comparable with single chine
kayaks, whose chines are typically fully immersed and which have
smoother entries and exits. You're comparing apples and oranges.

water passes smoothly over a smooth surface. water passing over a hard
chine becomes turbulant when the angle of the surface changes abruptly.
why is this so difficlut to grasp?

When does water pass across the chine? The major flow is along the axis
of the boat, not across it. The water flows around the boat and
underneath it.

...it shows exactly what I was talking about. For a given beam width,
the spherical hull has the least wetted surface. If you ignore the beam
width and look only at equal displacement, a spherical hull still has
the least wetted surface. Although shape E is not perfectly spherical,
it's pretty obvious that a spherical shape with slightly increased depth
would have as little or perhaps slightly less surface area. This
explains why racing boat hulls are narrow and round. It's too bad he
chose not to include such a sample in the diagram.

I think you need to define what you mean by "spherical hull". A sphere is
not a circle. Do you mean by "spherical" that the immersed section is a
semi-circle.

OK. For a given displacement a true spherical shape has the least
surface area. However, that's not a practical shape for a boat. For a
real boat shape, a semicircular cross section will have the least
surface area.

I agree about the minimal girth, but can you name any
non-racing kayaks whose immersed section is a semi-circle? How do they
deal with the instability? Sponsons?

You evidently don't understand stability, either. In the Winters diagram
you reference, the semicircular cross section at the top will be quite
stable, due to the amount of flare above the waterline. Here's a link
that explains this in more depth:

http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/Desi...tyArticle.html

nope, the drag of the hard chine hull includes the turbulence about the
chine which is greater than the difference in friction resistance.

Again, where is the reference? I don't believe that a single hard chine
is going to cause turbulence in an of itself in a well designed kayak.

it occurs toward the top of the speed range when residual drag
overtakes surface drag. at low speeds its not important.

Why? You have yet to explain why there would be more drag on a hard
chine boat. You make vague references to turbulence, but have offered no
proof of this. Why would this only be an issue at higher speeds? Water
flows over the hull at all speeds, doesn't it? If the chine caused
turbulence, it would create drag at all speeds, wouldn't it? You're not
making any sense.

but
don't forget you can have a V-bottom hard chined boat which tracks better
than a round bottom hull with the same length and wetted surface and the
hard chined hull will have less residual resistance because it spends less
time slewing around, and more time going straight. as we have all seen,
the boat with the rounded bottom cross section will often have "deadwood"
added at the bow and stern or a skeg (or rudder) or both to help it track,
and these add wetted surface to the rounded hull.

You're drawing a lot of invalid conclusions here. A long, narrow,
rounded hull with straight keel line (typical racing hull configuration)
tracks VERY strongly.

there you go dragging in racing boats again. do you intend to limit your
part of the discussion to racing boats so you can prove some obsacure point?

The point I'm making is that your sweeping generalities about hull
shapes are simply wrong. A rounded hull can track strongly. A rounded
hull can be quite stable. The fact that you don't understand how doesn't
change these facts.

... One reason why most of them have rudders is to
enable the paddler to turn the boat, not because it won't track. The

now you're really showing how little you actually know about kayaks. the
rudder is there for tracking, for the most part in cross winds. it's not there
for turning.

It depends on the type of boat. On a touring boat, a rudder should be
used only to control the boat's heading, though most paddlers use them
to turn the boat. I agree that this is incorrect, but that's what most
people do.

In the case of racing boats, the rudder is used to turn in lieu of
turning stroke.

however skegs and rudders are added to round bottom kayaks to
provide decent tracking which they can't get otherwise.

Utter nonsense! I used to own Nigel Foster Silhouette, which has a
rounded bottom. That was a very stong tracking boat. I also owned a
Norkapp HM, which was an extremely strong tracking boat. Tracking has
very little to do with the cross sectional shape of the hull.

I agree that as
the lenght of the boat increases tracking increases. Someboduy who shal
remain nameless mentioned in this newsgroup some time ago that too many
people buy kayaks which are too long for what they need. perhaps they do
it to get decent traking from a round bottom hull?

No, that's not the case. There really aren't that many round bottomed
kayaks on the market. The majority have shallow V hulls.

main reason for rudders is to get maximum efficiency from the powerplant
(the paddler). It's more efficient to have a small rudder to control the
direction of the boat than it is to use leans and sweep strokes, which
reduce the biomechanical efficiency of the stoke.

which means they can't get it from the hull shape they are using. they
have to stick on a skeg or rudder. either the hull slews around creating

No, it has nothing to do with the hull slewing around. The boats in
question are VERY difficult to turn because they track extremely
stongly. You've completely missed the point again. Either that or you're
trying to reinterpret what I said and confuse the issue again.

By "deadwood" are you referring to bow and stern overhangs? If so, they
do nothing to aid tracking, as they're not in the water most of the time.

deadwood is extra hull under the bow or stern (or both) which improves
tracking by making the hull harder to turn. think of those long thin
entries on some knife blade bows. same at the stern.

I don't know how you can consider that "deadwood", as it contributes to
increasing the boat's maximum hull speed. Every high performance boat,
from kayaks to aircraft carriers have relatively plumb bows and sterns
with fine entries. It's certainly not done for aesthetics.

I'll guarantee you that if you stick a graph in the faces of customers,
the overwhelming majority of them will have no idea what they're looking
at, nor will they care. On the other hand, if a dealer simply told them
that a particular boat was well suited to someone their size, that same
percentage would accept that. The few that would understand the graph
might ask "why", in which case you can offer a more detailed explanation.

but you just finished writing that most kayak salespeople don't know squat
about the boats they are selling.

What's your point?

what I imagien is teh designer supplied teh retialer with a DC with all
the infor on it, including a program which will graph power vs speed for
different body weights. the reatiler has an old $30 486 PC system in the
store so peopel can find out which boats are suited to them.

Did your spell checker die or something?

You can imagine all you want, but that doesn't mean that anyone will
actually use it. As a former retailer, I can tell you from experience
that few people show more than a passing interest in such aids.

as for your comment about graphs, that's all they do in schools now.
every subject is full of graphs. they came in with th enew math in the 60's.
everybody with a high school diploma has been saturated with graphs.

That doesn't mean that they have any interest in seeing graphs outside
the artificial confines of the classroom. You're the data guy, so how
about conducting a poll and asking people when the last time they
created a graph, or even looked for one was? You're assuming that the
general population is like you, which isn't the case.

While I certainly wouldn't question your data analysis capability, it
has nothing to do with the way people react to information in real
world. What makes perfect sense to you would be nothing more than
"technical gibberish" to most people. I've dealt with people in the real
world (as a retailer and as a technical trainer) and I can tell you
unequivocally that's a FACT.

thanks but what I did is just what you are saying, the display and
interpertation of graphical data. did you know pie charts are the worst
way to present data? peopel don't see vertical pie shaped sections teh
same way they see horizonatl pie shaped sections. there are lots of other
perceptual problem with graphs. however everybody uses them, everybody
expect them, and they are a good way of presenting numerical relations if
done properly.

That's fascinating, Bill, but what does it have to do with this discussion?

Sorry Bill, but whether you like it or not, that's the way it works in
the real world. While I agree that that manufacturers should make
technical information available, doing so would be largely a wasted
effort as the overwhelming majority of customers would neither
understand it or care. Given that, I can't fault them for not wasting
their resources to distribute this information widely. Selling the boat
is the dealer's job; the manufacturer should provide them with the
information to do so, but they're not responsible for getting it to the
customer. If they want to put it on a web site where interested
customers can find it, fine, but including it in marketing literature
would be an unnecessary expense and waste of paper.

Its not techincal information when it's personal. It's personal
information. That's the real world. People's questions can be answered
with the right information. As I wrote earlier, it's the seller who
provides the right information for the buyer who will take sales away from
the seller who doesn't. As you wrote ealier, and as I have seen too, kayak
salespersons don't know much about the boats they sell and are not very
helpfull to buyers. Retail wages are low and aren't likely to improve. We
aren't likely to see knowlegeable people selling kayaks for low wages.
That's where computers can make a difference at the retail level for a
minimal outlay, a difference to both the buyer who will be more satisfied
with the boat he or she buys, and a difference to the retailer who
attracts business away from competitors.

You're still operating under the mistaken assumption that most people
will do the research or that they even care about such things. While
true enthusiasts or students of the sport may, the average paddler
doesn't. Like it or not, most people are sheep. They're perfectly
content to be led around and let others make decisions for them. This
seems to be especially true when it comes to recreation. They want to
recreate, not analyze data relating to their recreational pursuits.