I finally made time to work on my boat tonight. This Friday is my last day at my current job, and I start my new one on Monday, so I have been busy. I have also made a bookshelf between now and my last PakYak update.
I went out and bought a brand new bicycle tube this last weekend. I was thinking about getting one that would fit my bicycle, as I have patched both tubes on it at some point. This tube was cheap though.
I didn’t cut it straight, I let the curve of the tube work for me. I let the arc in the tube follow the natural curve that the finished assembly wanted to follow. I used a knife sharpener to punch the holes in the tube. It is the closest thing I have to an awl shape, and it was already in my pocket, so it was really handy.
A short video of putting the snaps onto the rubber endcap. I am using the tooling that came with one of the two snap kits I bought.
Here it is ready to assemble. I found it is easier to stretch the tube onto the bolt and slide it all the way down, then add the next piece of boat.
Here it is assembled. Mine seems looser then what I have seen in other people’s photos.
If I may suggest not drilling holes on the ends of each of the end side stringers… It makes adding the other half of the snaps less then ideal. I hadn’t drilled out the end stringers for the opposite end of the boat, so I only had to deal with this issue on one side.
I bought screw in snaps as seen on the right. But I was worried that with the hole already there, the snap won’t be that strong due to the risk of tearing out the end of the stringer. I tried to pop-rivet the snap on, but my rivets are too thin for the holes I had drilled (sized for the bolts that are used to assemble the rest of the boat).
I ended up using the screw in snaps. I just centered the snaps between the end of the stringer and the hole. Time will tell if this was a wise choice or not.
Here is a close up shot of the final rubber end cap. It looks like I am going to need to trim the end of the bolt short. I will also probably get some nylock nuts for these bolts as well. They already have a rounded end so I don’t have to worry about the skin as much.
