I completed my solo yoke and have used it quite a bit this year ... quite pleased with it, light, comfortable and it suits the boat style. I leveraged posts from Jim and Bryan in this forum for the basic concept ... got a bit inspired (carried away maybe ) with seeing how I could shave any unnecessary wood away and still have something I liked the look of ... what follows is a summary of that journey. Just a point about pictures, if they appear cutoff, just click the pic to see the full size ... all the pics here show the complete unit.
The main frame is made with 3 pieces, a left and right side, plus a center spacer. This picture is where the 3 pieces get put together with epoxy.
This is the form used to steam bend the cherry strips and later used to laminate the strips with epoxy to form the left and right sides of the frame. Getting the strips bent quickly is a bit tricky, so one side of the bending jig gets screwed in place, the other slides in guides, this speeds up the time it takes to clamp the hot strips together. I used a separate jig for left and right side, to speed things up, if you have lots of time you could use just one.
The frame strips being steam bend, setting/cooling in the jib.
A picture of the the cross member or spacer being bent on another jig. In both cases the jigs are used for both bends and layup with epoxy.
The final shaped product, with the seat fit blocks and tail hook added, didn't get enough pictures of the intermediate steps, but I suspect with this forum, a final product shot would have sufficed.
On the seat .... showing the tail hook
Showing the seat fit blocks
Final setup, with the simple shock cord and 2 hooks, used to hold the yoke in place when in use.
The pads will be replaced this winter, these where the prototypes to see how I liked them. They have shaped layer of hard foam (~2" thick with shoulder shaped concave), and a second ~1.5" thick of soft foam on top of that, covered with the ever versatile black duck tape.
Brian