Laminated Masik

The Masik is the last and most important deck beam to be completed.  It is arched and will take the force of your legs and hips when rolling and bracing.  Laminating this beam was pretty straight forward although I did run into some slight problems.

The Masik is a laminated beam; I made mine from approximately 1/8” strips of cedar cut an inch wider and about 6 inches longer than the finish product was going to be.  The first problem I encountered was getting consistent thickness of my laminates.  1/8” think and 2 ½” wide strips of wood are almost impossible to cut on my table saw.  I also attempted to plane them with a power plainer but even though the plainer says it will go to 1/8” I found them to be a little thicker than that and they would not bend without splitting.

 

Once I got 10 pieces cut to thickness (this varied do to my table saw) I attempted to bend them with a single form as prescribed in Chris Cunningham’s book.  You need far more clamps than I have to make this work as you can see in the photo.  I just couldn’t get good compression so the layers would bond properly.  I’ve had a little experience with laminating wood in the past and used a press with good results so I decided to try that.  I made the press from a double thickness 2x12 that I glued and screwed together to get enough dimensional height.  I also drilled a couple of hole for my clamps to go into to act as the press.

Once everything was cut and ready to go I gave each layer a generous helping of Tightbond III and placed it in the press lined with wax paper.  The first problem I encountered was my grip clamps can’t generate enough force to compress everything together.  I ended up using pipe clamps to compress the layers and grip clamps to hold everything while I reset the pipe clamps.  Everything shifted a little in the form but that didn’t affect my finished product.

I let it dry for a couple of days then squared up the sides on a table saw.  I found before that it is impossible to keep the sides matched up so I make the strips wider than needed so I can cut it square once everything has dried.  Once I had square sides I laid the pattern I had made from the instructions in the manual I’m using and used that to cut the ends to fit the gunwales.  I did think that Cunningham’s book has you make the Masik to thin so I made mine about a ¼” thicker.  After test fitting and rounding the top and bottom I pegged it into place, and as I’ve done before I glued the pegs in.

With the Masik pegged and sanded I finished off the stringers, from the Masik to deck beam #3, that you can see the photo below of my son standing in the boat hold a broken rib.  The stringers I made from Cherry thinking that since they are pretty thin for the span they make hard wood would be the best.  I also have plenty of cherry lying around.  The stringers connecting deck beam #7 and #8 where also made out of cherry and I completed those at the same time.  These must take your weight as you are getting into the boat and you lay back on them to finish your rolls so they must also be strong.

Overall make the Masik was not very hard once I figured out what the best method for me was going to be.  As I’ve found in much of Chris Cunningham’s book Building the Greenland Kayak  I’ve had to modify the way things are done to fit my tools and skill set.