the final cut
Published April 24, 2006 | 
If a tinker were my tradewould you still find me,
carrin’ the pots I made,
followin’ behind me.
- bobby darin
Sunday I decided to remove the seat of my Anas Acuta myself. The weather was perfect. Cloudy, windy, and occasional spitting rain. You just can’t work on a British boat in any other conditions can you? Brian Day’s suggestion of using a dremel tool with a carbide cutter was absolutely the best suggestion. It allowed me to add a nice curve to the cut and went very quickly with no chipping. (By the way Brian is all over the new Seakayaker Magazine with bits on a High Stern Rudder, dent removal, & a review of a paddle sports rapid repair kit.) I’ve not glued the seat in yet as I want to take it out and play around a bit before commit to the seat’s final position. If you want to see a step-by-step photo story Just click here.
I probably won’t post tomorrow as I have a class to teach down at Rutabaga. Apparently I get to take the new retail shop staff out and show them what I know. . And they think that will take a whole day!???? Now, tell me that doesn’t make you want to do your own research BEFORE you go to the store!! 
BTW I see Thomas D. is in SK’s letters this month as well. Cool! Cool. 
Related Posts:
8 Responses to the final cut
The dremel tool did a nice clean job,a jigsaw would have chewed it up pretty good.
Nice colour combo on the AA,I usually prefer the flashier red and yellows but the grey/white mix
grows on you after a while.
Bert
You do nice work!!!
One thing does concern me though–you mentioned that it was spitting rain. . .I know that you haven’t been on the “streets” as an EMT for awhile, but regardless of that, rain and power tools??? Glad you survived to provide us with the excellent photos and step by step description.
BTW, which size foam seat did you go with?
Darn, I thought you were going to send it to me.
Your work looks good though, and you got around to it a LOT faster than I was going to…
; )
Thomas
Well as long as you don’t plug in the dremel tool you won’t get shocked in the rain. You just have to push it back and forth really fast.
Thanks Bert, my feeling too originally.
But I do like the white now.
Yeah Thomas, I was thinking you might just never send it back!!
It’ll be interesting to see where you put the final position. You going to have Mary look at trim from the side? I think you should really try to get that backband screw out and fool around with a thinner foam backrest on the coaming/bulkhead.
As I’m paying more attention these days, I am finding my backband in the Explorer is messing up rotation and makes layback stuff harder. Was fooling around with the foam masik again Saturday, and it really took the pressure off my aging knees.
FWIW.
Thomas
Hey,
Yeah I did notice I nice change with the Explorer. But on other days I still think I wouldn’t mind the back band on the Explorer. Maybe once I get that foam block the way I want it, it will be ok. With the Acuta I’m going to just take it step by step and see what feels best to me. In the end I could just cut the hangers off completely. I just don’t want to go overboard and wish I’d not have done it.
The back band is strange. There’s got to be some sort of clip back there but I can’t see it or feel anything I recognize. At least it does not seem like a normal nut. You can turn the screw all day and nothing happens.
If it does not effect the trim too much, I noticed just getting the seat another inch or two ahead really makes laybacks easy.
I was wondering if you were really going to keep the seat lower as you had originally planned, and what that would do for your hand roll, because the conventional wisdom is that raising the seat makes (layback) rolls easier.
Your project reminded me that I shouldn’t fix the seat in my new kayak permanently until I’ve tried it out for a good long while, and to take some video to check the trim.
Hi Derrick!
Perfectionist! Well done and a wise decision to take some time before glueing the seat definitely in space.
I am more the restless type. Quick and dirty. The result is that I am sitting (in the VKN-Svalbard) on a piece of cell foam on top of the Valley foam seat. It works, but it would have looked neater if I had put it under the seat… Someday the Valley seat will get loose and I will correct my fault.
Then I won’t cover the whole area under the seat with cell foam. I will cut the cell foam in two pieces and leave a small space between the two parts to create a channel/drain to allow the water to flow under the seat through -> to prevent water accumulating behind the seat.
I am sure you already made your thoughts about the drain!?
Greetings,
Hans