Building a Strip Kayak

Before jumping into building a strip kayak, I wanted to find out all I could about the process. I read the book Kayakcraft: Fine Woodstrip Kayak Construction by Ted Moores cover to-cover and referred to it frequently during construction.

- Alan Bergen

I selected Bear Mountain Boats' 16' 5" Resolute touring kayak from their online catalog. I chose this boat based on my size and weight, and its excellent stability. The next step was deciding whether to build it from scratch or from a kit.

Building from a kit means everything is provided except for the strongback, which is a long, low table used as the foundation for the molds that define the shape of the kayak. People who don't have my kind of woodworking and fiberglassing experience can also build a kayak (or canoe), but I'd recommend they begin with a kit boat.

I have a lot of experience as an amateur woodworker, and I have worked on my sailboat with fiberglass and WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy. I was confident I could build a strip kayak without a kit, So, I chose to build from full-size plans. Soon the fun began.

I started by building the strongback (Fig. 1 & 2). I took my time because inaccuracies here would be transferred to the finished boat. The next step was building the molds. I transferred the full-size plans to plywood, cut them out with a saber saw, and attached them to the strongback (Fig. 3-7). Using a string, I checked to make sure all the molds were in line. I used a batten to adjust the height of the molds so that they were in vertical alignment (Fig. 8).