My fascination with the weight of the kayak I’m building is growing with my surprise at just how light in weight the hull is. I thought I’d do a quick check on a couple of samples of Paulownia and Cedar.
For the wood I’ve bought it works out that Cedar is about 0.40g/cm3 (about 17 lbs/ft3), and the Paulownia is about 0.27g/cm3 (about 25lbs/ft3). So the Paulownia is 2/3rds the density of the Cedar!
Now that has me thinking – I’m mostly building the deck in Cedar – the extra wood weight plus the coming/deck deckplates etc – hmmm, will it be tippy without me in it? I reckon from looking at it that the deck is about 2/3rds the size of the hull so it might will be balanced at about the same weight top half and bottom half!
2 comments:
The weights you're achieving are impressive! I'm excited because I'm going to use Paulowina for my Hunter. By my calculations your Cedar deck will be 1.6kg heavier than a Paulowina one. For this reason I think I'll build my entire boat from Paulowina. Returning to yours, thats about the equivalent of a spare paddle, a drink bottle & a sandwich strapped to the deck. I reckon it'll stay upside up without you in it. I'm looking forward to seeing the other tricks you must have deployed to achieve such low weight. Cheers, Paul
I think the other aspect that's keeping the weight down is the high density 170g fibreglass. The last boat I made used 200g fibreglass - this seemed to soak up a lot more epoxy and seemed a lot more solid.
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