The deck beam I took out was a bit fragile - it broke when I was taking it out. It was under a reasonably amount of stress, but still, I want to lean back with confidence. So I will make the backrest more robust.
More interesting though, modern sea kayaks have thigh braces so you can lock yourself to the boat for control when you roll. Baidarkas are high inside and there's no good leverage for rolling. I have those unused mortises in the gunwales right in the middle of the cockpit side, where a thigh brace would start. I could shape the cockpit-front deck beam with places to connect the front end of the brace. Let's make the forward deck beam "brace-ready"!
The old deck beams were made for 2x4 lumber, but these needed to be heavier so I bought a lovely cedar 2x6.
The lines are a bit faint in the photo, but you can see that the center section is the critical width needed to slide my legs in (as measured when I put the boat on the floor and measured for fit!). The side pillar sections will anchor the thigh braces.
Yay for narrow band-saw blades. This would have taken forever by hand!
The plane made short work of the saw marks on the outside and the spokeshave cleaned up the inside, followed by rounding the edges with sandpaper.
The tenons are interesting to cut because the sides of the boat narrow toward the ends so the beams aren't cut square across.
The first thing is to use a sliding T-bevel to get that angle.
But how to hold the square against the wood when I've cut it away? Luckily I have a piece that neatly fills that hole!
The next trick is to very carefully cut on the line - WITHOUT cutting down into the tenon. A nice hack is to put a piece of wood on the far side at the height of the line. Then I can watch how close I am on this side and cut down till it touches the block of wood on the far side. Voila! Perfect cut! Note that the tenon itself I could cut on the band saw.
A quick floor test - the width of the arched space is perfect for sliding my legs in (with room for clothing) and the brace supports are at the right height for bracing! However, the edge of the underside of the curve was a bit sharp against my shins sliding in. Need to angle the underside of the curve up a bit.
Propping the beam up on piece of wood holds it at an angle so that the bandsaw cut is at just the right slope to make sliding under the curve comfortable.
There we are! The cockpit beams are in place! Next up, thigh braces and cockpit coaming.
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