jonatanforsberg.net: Building a Greenland kayak (Part 1)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Building a Greenland kayak (Part 1)

In addition to enjoying my son and family, written a MSc thesis, working full time as a doctor at the Department of Neurology (saving up for my current paternal leave) and having had a few exams this winter, I have also been building a Greenland kayak with the local crew.

Gunwales, futtocks, a keel and keel ends. Deck beams and stringers and strakes. A masik and plates of veneer. Many knots and dowels, and a fair amount of glue. Two different steaming cannons. And a cockpit.

The wooden frame of the kayak is finished after quite some labour and good clean fun. A more thorough explanation and lots of photos are available here (click on "Building a kayak").

Next up is covering the skeleton with cloth, stitching it together and making it impermeable. Then the carpentering of a double-bladed paddle and the sewing of a spraydeck. Hopefully all done prior to the club's ceremony of ship naming and launching in early summer, which means I will be back with more of this in part 2.

"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants"
(Sir Isaac Newton)

"you chose to act as if you had never been molded into civil society and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you."
(Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France)

"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve"
(Sir Karl Popper)

Liberty is, of course, a loftier goal. But only those who have never known disorder fail to grasp that [order] is the necessary precondition for liberty."
(Niall Ferguson in Colossus)

"When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude."
(Theodore Dalrymple in What is Poverty?)

"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. // We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
(Sir Karl Popper on the paradox of freedom in The Open Society and Its Enemies)

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. // The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."
(Thomas Sowell in Is Reality Optional?)

"Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop."

(G.K. Chesterton in Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State)

"to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress."
(The aim of The Economist)

"This is the lesson: Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
(Sir Winston Churchill, October 29th 1941, Harrow School , London)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Building a Greenland kayak (Part 1)

Science tweets

Labels

Weblog Archives

Anglosphere links

Skandinaviska länkar

Latest posts