Kayak Plans From Blueprints to Boat in your Basement

Typical Sea Kayak Plans Include:

A "Builder's Drawing" showing what the completed kayak will look like in three views	A "Stacked Forms" drawing showing how all the forms related to each other. This blueprint includes notes pertinent to the construction of each kayak.

Cockpit and "endform" or "stem form" patterns. Some plans will also include seperate bulkhead patterns, but all the designs can use the forms patterns as bulkhead patterns.	Each form is then drawn out seperately at full size with all the needed reference lines.

These pages may be glued directly to the form material.	This assures that there is no translation error due to inaccuracies in tracing the patterns.

How to Purchase Sea Kayak Plans

Kayak plans from other designers may require you to make multiple copies so you will have enough patterns for each of the forms, or the patterns will only be one half of the form so you will need to flip over the pattern in order to draw the full form. All the copying and tracing required can introduce errors into the pattern which will translate into inaccuracies in the finished boat. With the kayak plans from Guillemot Kayaks, you can just glue the pages to a piece of plywood and cut out around the lines. This assures the minimum chances for mistakes. If it bothers you to cut up the plans, the "Stacked Forms" drawing is still available to help you recover from any mistakes that do occur. All the reference lines which help assure the forms are straight on the strongback are included on the drawings

All the drawings from Guillemot Kayaks are completely computer generated. The forms patterns are created in a naval architecture software package and then brought into a standard CAD package where notations and reference lines are added. A rectangle where the hole for the 2x4 strongback is located is included. Because of the plans are computer generated the strips are assured to lay fair and smooth. All you need to do is get them straight on a strongback.

The kayak plans come with a booklet of kayak building notes. These notes are probably not enough instruction for a first time builder. The best instructions are in The Strip-Built Sea Kayak book by Nick Schade.