Father’s day was yesterday (hope you didn’t forget!), and this weekend, we celebrated the life of my uncle–a well-loved husband, father, and friend to many–at his visitation and funeral. Oh, and we also celebrated my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary! It’s been an emotion-packed weekend, that’s for sure.
Since I’m feeling pretty grateful for my dad these days, I wanted to share a few photos I snapped recently of one of the projects he’s been working on lately–wooden kayaks.
He and my brother John began building two kayaks a few years ago, and when they were completely and utterly successful, they kept going and are now currently building kayaks number 3 and 4.
The picture above is of one of the kayak tops. As you can see, it’s just a bunch of bits of wood glued together.
Here’s the second of the two kayaks currently being made–this one is a little farther along.
Once they sand away all the imperfections and the glue that leaks everywhere, they put on layers and layers of epoxy that bring out the richness of the wood and make the kayaks seaworthy.
They’ve made more progress on these, but I need to get some updated pictures. Until then, check these out–here’s the two kayaks they built a few years ago that I grabbed from my mom’s blog):
As a testament to my father and brother’s craftsmanship, they actually float! Proof:
Now I am definitely thinking I need to get myself one of these. Dad’s thinking about taking a Cadet class from church under his wing next year and building kayaks with them, and I want to be there. They made paddles last year with the class, so the sky is the limit. Think I can pass for a 12-year-old boy?
I have a pretty incredible Dad, huh? In more ways than one. đŸ™‚
Planting Sequoias 