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ManaiakalaniModel Voyaging Canoe based on Hokule‘aRDK Herman, 2017 |
HATCHES: I knew there were hatches into the hull, not from Herb's diagram, but from working on Hokule‘a back in March 2013 when I attended ‘Imi Na‘auao training for the World Wide Voyage. I had also seen them when the Kaua‘i canoe Namahoe was under construction in 2012.
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Hatches atop the hull, Namahoe, under construction 2012. |
Making these puppies was tricky, because I didn't want to use any nails or screws, and it was difficult to clamp them without them parallelagramming into sandwiches. So in the end I used Contact Cement, which you put on the pieces and let dry a bit before fitting the pieces together EXACTLY. No margin of error here. That's what I did, but Contact cement is not as strong as wood glue or epoxy, so one or two of them fell apart while I was sanding them later, and had to be re-glued. Now on the real canoes, the hatch covers come down over and around the tops of the hatches, to keep water out. That was not feasible, so I made ones that sat on top with an inset to keep them in place. Problem was, each hatch was a slightly different shape. So each hatch cover was custom-fit. I then marked hatches and their matching covers with Roman numerals, to keep them straight.
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Of course, then there was the matter of cutting the holes in the deck, carefully, such that each hatch would sit exactly over the hole. That I managed to do successfully, and was able to use epoxy to glue them down. That would add more strength to holding them together too. At some point I realized that there needed to be wae to lash the ‘iako to. On the different voyaging canoes I had seen, these were all pretty much the same.
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And here are the hatches on the finished canoe:
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You can see how the ‘iako are lashed to the wae. This turned out to be particularly tricky, as I describe later. First there is the matter of making the ‘iako.
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