CLC's spring small boat festival is this weekend

Nothing to do this weekend?  Don't sit around bored.  Come to CLC's spring in the water small craft event.

Join us for a fun day on the water!     The weather forecast is just about perfect for Saturday's on-the-water activities: 70 degrees, some sun, and a moderate breeze from the southeast.  Best of all worlds. Don't miss this once-a-year opportunity to demo most of the CLC fleet*. Smallcraft like the Skerry (above) are even available for sailing demos. What's new on the beach for 2013? Petrel Play SG Petrel SG Expedition Wherry Shearwater Sectional Faering Cruiser   *Cocktail Class Racers and the Peeler Skiff will not be on the beach, but they will be at our Open House on Friday.   Stop by our factory and showroom on Friday between 1pm and 7pm for seminars, tours, and a cookout.  Admission is FREE!

Ed's Once-a-Year Deals on Kits, Gear, & Supplies   Ed's going crazy! Not just CLC caps---he's blowing out E V E R Y T H I N G. Boat kits, random boat parts, finished boats(!), epoxy and fiberglass, paint and varnish, paddles, kayak seats, spray skirts, minicell, safety gear, spruce oars, bronze oarlocks, roof racks, sandpaper, PFDs, PDFs---he can't be stopped.   But he'll turn back into a stingy chief operating officer on Monday, so you gotta come to the Friday Open House for the deals!

Cheers, John C. Harris Chesapeake Light Craft

Chesapeake Light Craft's 2012 Open House is this coming Saturday (just in case your engraved invite got lost in the mail)

Open House on Saturday, December 8th Expert Shop Tips, Deep Discounts, New Designs & Fellow Boat-Nuts!   Join us on Saturday, December 8th for an Open House at Chesapeake Light Craft!   Lots of RSVPs already and we're looking forward to hanging out with fellow boat nuts in our newly expanded facility. Date & Time: Saturday, December 8th, 9am to 4pm  RSVP   We'll have one-day-only specials running with fat discounts on all the popular gear and supplies.  Kits, too.   We're excited to welcome Bruce Niederer (right), one of the epoxy wizards from WEST System's HQ in Bay City, Michigan.   We've been lucky to work with Bruce on several big projects, including building 44 Sassafras canoes in three weekends.  (Ask Bruce about that...)  Bruce will be demonstrating professional epoxy techniques and fielding your epoxy questions.   Here is Saturday's schedule of events:   10 a.m. - Making Your Own Kayak Seat with Joey Schott 11 a.m. - Advanced Epoxy Techniques with Bruce Niederer 1 p.m.  - Fine Tool Sharpening with David Fawley 2 p.m.  - Shop Tour & CNC Demonstration with David Fawley 3 p.m.  - Varnish like a pro with John Harris Also lots of neat prototypes hanging around, including the new Peeler Skiff. Please take a moment to RSVP on this page. If you RSVP, you're eligible for door prizes.  We'll hand those out in the afternoon.   Directions to Chesapeake Light Craft in Annapolis.      Unable to attend the Open House?  We still have great deals for boatbuilders this holiday season.  Save 10% on select Chesapeake Light Craft Gift Cards, which are good for everything in our store without exception or expiration. Standup Paddleboard kits, powerboat plans, lightweight trailers, canvas covers, bottle openers, safety whistles.  Everything! Check out our Gift Card deals here!     Cheers,   John C. Harris Chesapeake Light Craft  Please don't click "reply" to this email, as your note may get lost in my inbox.  Compose a new email and send it to john@clcboats.com          New In-Store Deals: - Classic Outboards - Surplus Lumber - CLC Demo Boats!   Email ed@clcboats.com for details.

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Chesapeake Light Craft's Open House--A good day out.

Yesterday was Chesapeake Light Craft's annual Open House.  CLC manufactures well designed kits for plywood canoes and kayaks and more recently cedar stripe small craft as well.  Along with showcasing their various kits with holiday price reductions, CLC also hosts a number of useful demonstration seminars on various aspects of boat building during the open house and, although most of what's presented is elementary, there's always a trick or two to be learned plus the opportunity to ask questions and closely examine boats in different stages of completion makes spending the day worthwhile.

CLC is located in Annapolis, Maryland about 20 minutes  from my house.

Here are just a few examples of the many different kayaks which CLC offers in kit form.

Seen in the staff break room...

"Cocktails, anyone?"  A new addition to the CLC line up is the "Cocktail" class racing hydroplane.  This little boat is based on a design from the 1930s and has become something of a local obsession on the East coast.  The rules are fixed around this hull shape and allow an 8 hp engine for skippers weighing more than 180 lb or a 6 hp engine for skippers weighing 180 or less.  The boats have a top end speed of about 20 mph and one of the guys who works at CLC said that these boats are "stupid fun".  One of my Moth Boat buddies is lusting to built one.  Although CLC's kit version is still a work in progress, enough prototype boats have been built to hold a few races this past summer.  I believe that plans are available separately.

The engine on this one is an Evinrude.

Here's a Cocktail under construction. 

This is a strip-built "Nymph" design canoe.  Although difficult to seen in this photo, this canoe has a significant amount of tumblehome in the shearline.  In the background one can see a building jig and set of station molds for a kayak.  Just to the right of the bow of the canoe are a stack of novel, at least to me, spacer blocks for locking the molds in place along the jig's strongback.  I'll come back to this point later in the post.

One of the co-founders of MAS epoxy was on hand demonstrating basic glass sheathing techniques while extolling the virtues of his line of products opposed to those of his competitors.  MAS claims that their epoxy wets out glass cloth better due to lower viscosity than other brands and also does not produce a waxy amine blush during the curing process.  It did seem to saturate the cloth with less trouble than I've had with other brands.  I may have to try it the next time I run out of goop.

A new to me tip is to use a small piece of peel ply on the stem to get the wetted out cloth to behave and not wrinkle and pucker as it sometimes does.  The slippery peel ply cloth is easily removed from the fiberglass surface once the resin has kicked off.

Meanwhile back at the kayak building jig, Joey, one of the CLC staff, demonstrated a novel way to lock station molds in place without needing screws or other fasteners.  The U-shaped wooden spacers are built to the exact lengths required to position the various molds at the correct distances along the strongback with the last spacer being locked in tight with wedges.  The main advantage of this system over cleats and screws is that it's easier to get the finished hull off the jig by knocking out the wedges and thus freeing all the molds instead of struggling to remove screws which may be hidden by the built up boat.

Positioning the molds

Adding the wedges to lock the spacers and all the molds in place.  He demonstrated the tightness of this system by picking the stongback up off the jig and turning it upside down.  Nothing moved. 

There was a lunch break before the next demo and I went outside to walk around.  A well known specialty bicycle shop is located just a few doors down, in the same block of warehouses as CLC but sadly they were not open.  Interestingly, the original owner of CLC sold that business to it's current owner and then went into the custom bicycle business.  I've done business with Chris Kulczycki in both ventures.

After the lunch break there was a quick and dirty demonstration of the hollow grind sharpening technique for plane irons and chisels.  After this we were treated to a tour of the wood working shop.

This machine takes flat boards and mills them into 1/4" strips complete with bead and cove edges in one pass!  Those who have done the labor involved with making "canoe strips" would be suitably impressed.

David feeds a 3 1/2" cedar board into the machine on this end...

and ready to use bead and cove edged strips emerge from this end--amazing!  Note that there is no odd piece of wasted wood as there probably would be if doing this by hand with a table saw and router.  Also, the edges were all perfect.

Next up in the tour was the CNC (computer numerical controlled) cutter with a vacuum table which can accommodate multiple sheets of plywood at a time.  This machine allows CLC to produce their high quality kits at reasonable prices.  The kits for the Nutshell pram and the Shellback dinghy which Wooden Boat Magazine sells are produced for them by CLC.

David took a junk sheet of plywood and quickly set up the machine to cut out the shape of a monkey.

Voila!  In addition to cutting out components for their own kits, CLC will do custom cut work provided that the design is formatted so that their computer can read the file.  The designer of one of the hydrofoiling Moths here in the local area has taken advantage of this resource for the pieces that made up the vacuum bag molds for his boat--it ain't cheap however...

The final session of the day was a demonstration of varnishing over cured epoxy surfaces.  I picked up a couple of useful tricks but, operating under the "if you've seen one you've seen 'em all" principle, I didn't bother to take any photos of varnish drying.  At the end of the day I found some useful cut-off pieces of marine grade ply in the bargain bin and also bought a scrap piece of an adhesive-backed, foam non-skid material called "sea dek" which CLC uses in some of their kits to try out.  So, the day ended with your diarist in possession of useful information and bargain priced stuff--what's not to like?!