Cape Falcon Kayak

Because the accompanying video courses call out imperial measurements, and we are constantly making updates to both the plans and videos, we’ve found that metric plans leave a lot of room for potential confusion or error. For builders outside the US, we recommend purchasing a metric to imperial tape measure to make your build easier.

Unlike nearly all other forms of boatbuilding, skin-on-frame building has never seen the sort of commercial application that leads to good standardized building practices. Instead, what we have is a small handful of books written by experienced hobbyists. Using the techniques in these books, skin-on-frame building is slower, less efficient, heavier, and less durable than it needs to be.

This is where I started out 20 years ago. Using these books in combination with open access to kayak historian Harvey Golden's research library, I quickly surpassed the existing knowledge, building 15 kayaks my first year and almost twice that my second. From there I taught in-person skin-on-frame kayak building classes, producing between 50–80 kayaks per year for the next 12 years. To put it simply, in 14 years of building over 1000 skin on frame kayaks I developed better kayak designs, and much faster, easier, and more durable ways to build them. Many of these techniques just make the overall building process much simpler and more enjoyable, but some of these techniques are unique to my kayaks. My modern designs are often built with extreme tensions and unfair lines that, while barely visible in the finished product, are critical to performance.

“Ok, but I’ve built skin on frame boats before.” I get this a lot, so if that’s you, let’s dig a bit deeper here. Let’s say you’re going to clamp a stringer on my F1 design, all you’ve got to do is just measure the heights and clamp right? So you go and try to do that in the logical sequence, but every time you go to push the stringer up for that last clamp in the stern the whole thing snaps flat or blasts sideways off the boat. After about six frustrating tries you make the logical assumption that my measurement must be wrong, so you clamp it on ½ inch lower down, and it works fine and gives better skin to rib clearance which makes sense. Later on you get the boat out on the water and kick it up on edge to see this magic F1 edge-turn for yourself….and nothing happens. Why? It’s because of what you did with that chine. What you were supposed to do is clamp the stringer on with 2 inch metal spring clamps at a downward diagonal angle, starting at rib 11, then 1, then 5, then 15, and THEN you can get that last rib to chine connection to stay put in the stern. It’s simple and not hard, but also not at all intuitive, and not described in any book.

Take what I just wrote and apply it to a hundred other things about the kayak, and you can see right away why the video course makes a huge amount of sense. You get to skip the 15 year learning curve and have more fun building a better kayak faster.

In addition to the cost of the course and plans, you should budget $550–$750 for your build. Materials costs vary based on local availability, shipping costs, and how many items you choose to build yourself as opposed to purchasing from us.

You can login and view the course on any device. Enrolling in a course gives you lifetime access to the course material, including any updates or additions we make to the material in the future. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons we created these video courses instead of writing a book, because our designs and techniques are constantly evolving and we want you to always have access to the best and most up-to-date information.

You can download individual videos to your device, but be aware that file sizes can be quite large.