Build your own kayak work stand

Here's another link to a photo album I published for kayak work - how to cheaply build a work stand or sawhorse for your kayak.

The Problem:
Fiberglass boats don't sit well on a concrete garage floor. They're unstable, the floor will scratch the gelcoat, etc.

The Solution:
Somebody does make a product for this: The Talic Seahorse. This is an elegant solution, but a very spendy solution - $103 for 31" high stands. They do have their advantages though: They're collapsible, they're lightweight, and that's about it. If you don't need the portability offered by the Talic product, and especially want to avoid paying 103 clams for a garage solution, I'd recommend you do what I did - build your own.

Like with the YakPod, I first thought about reverse engineering somebody else's solution (in this case, Talic's). I mean, how hard could it really be, right? Well, I had sketched a few ideas on paper to do this, but one day while sitting in the garage with my buddy Dale (who was building a beautiful Pygmy, which is also featured in the photographs), it occurred to me that I was making things too complicated. Grabbing my sawhorses and some spare closed-cell foam, I went to work. I cut two pieces of foam as wide as the beam of the boat and sized them to fit directly on the sawhorses. Then, I cut V-shapes in the foam to accomodate the shape of the keel in the general area of the fore and aft bulkheads. The picture above shows the boat resting on these supports. It works great, and since the sawhorses are adjustable in height as well, it can be sized as necessary. It's the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid!