dryfly.ca started as a website for sharing one of my DIY projects, a stitch and glue kayak. Since then I've added several more projects including a skin-on-frame kayak, cedar strip canoe, kayak paddles, canoe paddles, building a spey rod, and an antenna for receiving OTA HDTV. I also occasionally ramble on about politics, technology, bike racing, product reviews and last but not least, our kids.
Click on the Photo Gallery to lots of my pictures in their full glory, including family, friends, boat building, travels, etc.
Tight Lines!
Archive for September, 2006
September 29, 2006 at 5:18 pm · Filed under Sports
Don’t you love it when you put on a pair of pants that you haven’t worn for a coon’s age, and low and behold you find a $5 bill in the pocket? Well I can do one better. I realized today that I had $4300 sitting in my margin trading account. I guess I was expecting to make some trades earlier this year, didn’t make any, then forgot about it. That’ll help pay for the $400 of fishing gear we bought yesterday at a liquidation sale (which is a whole other story). Suffice to say that we now have a nice 4wt 4piece fly rod and a 9′ 8wt rod for salmon/beach casting.
September 20, 2006 at 6:19 am · Filed under Tern 14 kayak
Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve added any information.
I didn’t do much work on the boat during the summer. We were pretty busy and the longer daylight hours meant that I spent a lot more time in the evenings playing with the kids in the park and at the beach. I was pretty tired at the end of those days.
The progress I’ve made includes:
1. sanding the hull and deck to a flat finish prior to applying the polyurethane (almost finished)
2. glued the coaming spacer in place
3. laminated the coaming and cut it to fit on the spacer
4. 1/2 through making some wooden kayak cradles for the car roof rack
The gallery photos describe a bit more detail of the most recent building process, check them out if you’re interested.
The next steps will be to do a light sanding with 220grit paper, cut out the hatches and glue in the hatch lips and bulkheads, and then apply the polyurethane. Then it’ll be done!
September 20, 2006 at 6:12 am · Filed under Tern 14 kayak
Inspired by the wooden kayak cradles made by Ross Leidy, I decided to try and make some myself. BTW, check out Ross’s great website. He’s created a free easy-to-use kayak design software package called Kayak Foundry. Amazing stuff…
I couldn’t find any 1/16″ ash veneer locally and I didn’t feel like ordering a bunch from the US. So I hunted for some 1/4″ ash hardwood for bending. I didn’t look too hard for this either and decided to get some cheap popular 4″x4′x1/4″. It was kiln dried so I wasn’t sure if I could bend it. Using a heat gun I was sort of able to bend the wood, but it had severe cracking. I opted to fill these cracks with epoxy. Next I’ll fiberglass each cradle and hopefully they will be strong enough to hold a boat.
September 9, 2006 at 1:02 pm · Filed under Just Stuff
Last week Mercy and I went fly fishing on Skookumchuk Creek twice. Skookumchuk Creek is maybe the most beautiful river/creek in the Columbia Valley. The water is crystal clear which allows you to see the different coloured rocks and plant life. The sides of the creek are strewn with large boulders that you climb up on and look down into the pools below. In a lot of ways the Skookumchuk reminds me of the Skagit River. The Skagit is a bit bigger though, and the Skookumchuk is more rugged.
1033
The fishing in the Skookumchuk can be very good. On our first trip out we saw some huge bull trout and cutthroat. They are spawning at this time of year, and they were congregating at the upper end of the creek. The bull trout primarily sit in the deeper pools while the cutthroat are more active. I would guess that the largest bull trout we saw was maybe Read the rest of this entry »
September 5, 2006 at 8:19 pm · Filed under Just Stuff, Technology
Just prior to leaving on a vacation to the interior, I bought a new telescope. I’ve wanted one for years and now seemed like a good time to get one since the star gazing in the interior is so much better than in Vancouver. I had researced telescopes a few years ago along with first learning about them in the late 80′s. I had pretty much decided on getting a 6″ Newtonian reflector because of it’s light gathering capabilities and lower cost.
When I looked into these scopes a few years ago, a 6″ reflector cost about $500. Now they sell for $325 and this made it seem like too good of a deal to pass up. I almost got a 8″ reflector, it was probably a better deal. The 8″ gathers about 2X more light as the 6″ and it was priced only $125 higher. Since I wasn’t sure how much use we would get out of the telescope, I decided to save the $125.
On the first couple nights of using the telescope I’ve managed to see a few binary stars (Albierto – one gold and one blue star), the Andromeda Galaxy, the Ring Nebula, and a few star clusters. I need to start a logbook where I record everything that I find. We also got to look at the moon, that was pretty interesting to see too.
September 4, 2006 at 10:28 pm · Filed under Just Stuff, Photos
I’ve been messing around with putting together a photoblog for a while now. I’ve pretty much finished what I wanted to put together, so feel free to check out AlpineVisions at your leisure. Let me know what you think of the layout, and leave comments on the photos if you have something trivial to say.
As for the layout of the photoblog, it was made with WordPress (same as this website) with the help of the K2 theme, modified by Kristin Pishdadi. All of the files in the photoblog are hosted on Zooomr.
Next entries »
