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.
Yesterday I took the leap and bought M$ Vista Premium Home Edition. I was interested in re-installing the OS on my PC as things have been installed and reinstalled many many times over the years and I was thinking that the computer wasn’t running as smooth as it should any more. I could have just reinstalled winxp, but I needed to get a new license. It just didn’t make sense to me to go out and buy a copy of winxp when Vista will surely be the standard os within a year.
Vista comes in many different versions and flavours, and I chose the Premium edition comes with all of the eye candy and media functions, but lacks a few of the security things in the Ultimate edition. You can see a comparison of the versions on the Vista website. They also have a utility which analyzes your system and determines whether or not your hardware is compatible with Vista. My system was okay, except that I can’t use all of the functionality because of my older video card.
INSTALL
The first thing I did before installing Vista was to do a drive image backup of my system drive using Acronis True Image. Next, I had to make room on my c:drive for everything, and create a partition in which to install Vista. I did this with another Acronis product, Diskdirector Suite. I barely had enough room on the drive for these two partitions, but it will be okay for some testing. Next, I tried to install Vista onto the new partition while I was logged into WinXP. Things seemed to work okay but it kept getting stuck when I tried to choose the partition to install into. I was getting asked for the correct driver for the primary ide controller. I managed to get a hold of the controller driver from the Intel website (I have an intel 845E chipset on my motherboard), but this didn’t work. So I tried rebooting and installing directly from the dvd. This worked fine. Since I have a lot of other things to do, I decided to just let Vista do it’s thing and I walked away from the computer for a few hours. When I came back, Vista was fully installed and everything was working. It is by far the easiest OS installation I’ve ever done.
Dual booting with this setup works fine, using windows’ built in boot chooser thingy mabob.
COMPATIBILITY
The first thing I did was install Firefox and Thunderbird. I like to use open source software when it’s available and makes good sense. Firefox is the best PC web browser imo, and Thunderbird is an okay mail program. I prefer to use MS Outlook, but that is a very expensive program. Anyways, FF and TB installed okay and worked alright. However, my first problems occurred when I tried to install the flash plugin for FF. The plugin failed when trying to install automatically. So I downloaded the plugin from Adobe and tried a manual install. After doing this, FF wouldn’t start anymore. I kept getting an error saying that an installation was still in progress and had to finish before FF could start. I needed to uninstall and reinstall FF. So far these were a bit bumpy.
I next tried to install drivers for my Echo Audio Gina3G audio card (very nice card and company imo). This install went fine and I didn’t notice any immediate problems. So with audio working I thought I’d try to install one of my audio programs. Here I ran into more problems. The program would crash whenever I tried to change the audio configuration (ie driver configuration). I kind of stopped playing around with the software at this point and went to bed. I’m not sure how much energy or enthusiasm I have for continuous installing, uninstalling and testing of this new platform. I think I will try to work on it slowly over time.
Okay, now that the Pygmy Tern 14 is complete, I’m starting on my new project. I’ve decided to build a wood strip canoe. The design I settled on is from Bearmountain Boats and is designed by Steve Killing: the Freedom 15. Over the next several months (years?) I’ll write about the build on dryfly.ca, like I did with the Tern 14. The blog will serve up tid bits of information, with links to my gallery with pictures. The gallery is probably the easiest way to sequentially follow the build and each photo usually has a small bit of text describing the process shown.
I spent a lot of time trying to decide on the canoe I wanted to build. My criteria for the canoe was fairly simple. It had to be relatively stable, big enough enough for our small family to sit in but not over 17′, and not be a imitation of a bathtub. If that sounds like a simple recipe to you, then you are as wrong as I was. I looked at designs from Bearmountain, Green Valley Boat Works, Carrying Place Canoe & Boat Works, Gilpatrick’s designs, Valley Woodworking, and a few others. Of these, I saw several canoes that looked really appealing to me. Some of my favorite designs were the Keshequa 170, Kipiwa, Freedom 17 and Bob’s Special. For whatever reason though, I didn’t think these quite fit our needs. The Freedom 17 and Kipiwa were particularly interesting, but they both have a little bit less initial stability. Although this shouldn’t be an issue, the fact is that our family has been in a canoe only once. The last thing I want to do is turn the kids off of canoeing by plopping them in a canoe that seems a bit tippy – kids can get scared easily and then it can be a battle to change their minds. I eventually phoned Steve Killing to ask for his advice. He pointed me towards the Freedom 15 and said I could easily extend the hull to 16′. The F15 is more stable than the 17, and by extending the canoe to 16′ it will fit our size requirements. It won’t be as fast as the 17, but hey… there’s always an opportunity to build another canoe at some point, right?
So far what I’ve done with the build is:
buy and rip the plywood for the strongback
built some stands for the strongback
bought full length cedar (wrc)
bought some accent wood (AYC, walnut)
traced and cut out the stations
I’m almost finished cutting and sanding the stations, then it will be time to assemble the strongback and mill the strips. I found the cedar from an ad in craigslist. A local guy was selling a bunch of 3/4″x6″x19′ wrc planks that he had stored in his barn for 10 years or something. The wood is all straight tight grain with no knots. I bought 9 planks for $120. One tricky thing is that the planks are all edge grain. Typically a builder would start with flat grain so they can easily rip strips off the plank 1/4″ thick, and these strips will be edge grain. If I do that, I’ll end up with flat grain strips. Flat grain can be more difficult to sand and it may not look as good (this depends on the grain pattern – the boat may get a very “busy” look to it). So I can either rip flat grain strips or I can do the following: rip 7/8″ planks, then take each plank and try to rip 3 strips from each. My goal is to use strips that are 3/16″ thick because they are easier to bend and you get more strips per board. With this in mind, I figure I can get 20 strips per plank if I cut flat grain, or I’ll get 13 strips if I mill them for edge grain. I’ll probably try both methods and see what it looks like.
Two things may delay me putting the strongback together. First, Mercy (my wife) wants me to build a fireplace mantle first. Secondly, I may try to put together a Yost style SOF kayak frame before I start the canoe. If I do this, I can complete the kayak at any time while working on the canoe. But that’s a whole other story…
So without further ado, her are some pictures and a movie clip to show my current progress. Click on the photo to link to the build photo gallery.
