Building Fine Woodstrip Kayaks, A Video By Homegrown Boats

~ Roll Your Own Kayaks ~

Atlantic Coastal Kayaker Magazine's Video Review

Some higher resolution pictures of the kayak we built for this video

Photo of the latest project, a kevlar/cedar strip hybrid kayak (not part of the video)

Homegrown Boats was born when two longtime Cape Cod sea kayakers (whose hobby was building woodstrip kayaks and who had always wanted to film one of their boatbuilding projects) joined forces with another sea kayaker who was filming programs for public television and who had always wanted to build her own boat.

The result of this year and a half long project is an in-depth video on building a woodstrip kayak. The kayak we chose to build, "Panache", was designed by Rob Macks (of Laughing Loon Custom Canoes & Kayaks) ¹ although this video will be extremely useful no matter which design you decide to build. Even if you are just thinking about building a woodstrip boat you should get this video to see what it will be like.

There has always been something special about small wooden boats, but there is something almost magical about building one yourself.

Building these boats is not as difficult as it may first seem. We won 1st prize at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival for our very first woodstrip kayak!

Unlike making fine furniture which you hide away in your house, these creations actually take you places. These boats never fail to attract attention whenever we take them out for a paddle.

In this video we share with you all the tricks and tips we have learned over the years, through trial and error and by talking to other boatbuilders.

We created those wavy strips to enhance the design on the deck (it's not inlay). They are easy to make if you know the trick.

There are no metal fittings on this boat. Everything is made of wood, either western red cedar or sapele (an exotic cousin of mahogany).

By the way, those are hand carved sapele turtles holding down the hatches! You can get as fancy as you like.

There is nothing more frustrating than a 'how to' show that either doesn't deal with, or glosses over certain parts of a project just to save time. If you are like us and you learn better by watching as well as reading about something, you want to see everything (and you will).

You don't need a lot of woodworking experience for this project. Believe it or not, if you can build a birdhouse, you can probably build a kayak. Our boat took five months to build. This is a perfect winter project!

In this four hour video² we show you everything from picking out the right woods and setting up the strongback, through stripping, fiberglassing, all the way to varnishing the final product.

We will even explain how to make your own decals like this one which we made for our boat. Its easy if you know how!

When we began building kayaks we searched high and low for a video like this but there was none to be found. As far as we know this is the only one currently available. We made this into the video we would have wanted when we first started out. Unlike some shows we don't hide the problems we encountered; we tell you how we solved them.

We think this video will be a valuable tool in helping you build your own beautiful wooden kayak and the methods we show can be used for any kayak design you choose.
There are even some highschool woodshop teachers using our video and building one of these boats as a class project. This is the perfect teaching tool!

¹ This video is NOT intended to replace the plans, it is only intended to augment them. This video does not include plans for a boat.
² Video running time is approx. 3 hours and 45 minutes on one DVD.

To order contact:

Laughing Loon
Custom Canoes and Kayaks

Newfound Woodworks

Nick Schade's Kayak Building BBS
Guillemot Kayaks
Laughing Loon
Newfound Woodworks