Frej – Building the seat

Building a seat for someone else is a bit different from something you would choose for yourself. It‘s getting more complex if the person is still growing. My daughter is currently 14 years and the seat need to fit her – now and in the future.

I have one seat in Stock from the UK based Seat Manufacturer Gees – Beautiful looking and made from wood. But the under frame is made to suite a K1 or K2 Raceing-Kayak. Not a Seakayak. In addition I have a Kayaksport Seakayak seat in stock. Made from Plastik and too bulky to fit into the 50cm of the Frej.

Searching through the web I found the obvious ways to shape a seat out of foam. Not my preference. Than I stumbled across the website of Niklas from Sweden. https://niglaskajak.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/sits-3/

He shaped his seats out of little wooden squares. He uses the same material like the strips.

I adopted his way of seat building and used Balsa Wood instead of scrap strips. I went out and bought 15mm Balsa planks and cut them into little pieces.

I used the gees seat as from. I covered it with kitchen foil and glued the strips together following the form.

When the glue is cured, I will roughly shape the back and cover the back with glass cloth and epoxy after filling the gaps with sickened epoxy. This should provide enough strength to carve out the front.

The seat will be expanded as shown at Niklas site. I will cover the seat with fiber glass or carbon cloth.

We will see… stay tuned

30. May 2019

The seat is close to finish. Today I fitted it to my daughters “stem”. This was the first time she could sit into the kayak.

Balsa is a nice wood – the seat is very light wight and combined with glass very sturdy.

Best regards
Axel