Kayaks are probably the most custom tailored of any boats. In fact, if you’re building a traditional skin-on-frame kayak, then the dimensions are directly based on your size. While other kayak designs aren’t quite that customized, when it comes to kayaks size does matter. In this article, I’m going to focus on the volume of the [...]

I  have already talked about building techniques such as wood strip, stitch-and-glue, or skin on frame methods for building your kayak. So in this article, I am going to talk more about general styles of kayaks that you might come across if you’re out looking around. Now a quick look at Wikipedia gave me a list of about [...]

Kayaks come in a wide variety of lengths, widths, and shapes. These differences really do affect how the kayak will handle and respond on the water. Understanding the terms used to describe the kayak specs will both help you compare different kayak designs and help you choose a kayak that will fit your paddling activities.
With [...]

There are a number of choices that go into picking a kayak design. Some of the factors that you will have to consider include:

What building technique to use?
What type of kayak to build?
What shape, length, and width do you want?
How big a kayak you need?
Which kayak looks best?

But one thing we haven’t talked about yet [...]

Ok, so you’ve decided to go ahead and build a kayak, you’ve done some searching, you’ve looked at different kayak models and styles, and you noticed that there’s more than one way to build your own kayak. So, which kayak building technique is the best?
Well, I can’t tell you which building technique is best for [...]

Considering that you are reading a website about building kayaks, you likely already have your own definition of what a kayak is. However, just to make sure that you and I are on the same page, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to write out a working definition. So, pulling out our old “Random House College [...]