Boatbuilding fever WTF is wrong with me?
 

Last week I went on a short canoe trip with the various nutkins and it was fing great.

It also awakened my dormant boat building persona. I've built a Cat Boat and a wood strip canoe and worked on numerous wooden boats and have done a fair amount of deep water sailing. Now I have been borderline obsessed with building a smallish sailing dinghy (<16feet).

There are a number of realities that make this obsession really dangerously stupid, namely, I have about a year of solid work on my house before it is finished, easily an entire summer before the addition is sided. I've just resumed work on it now that my shoulders are almost pain free and strong enough to lift things overhead provided they weigh less than an average sized watermelon.

I'll post some photos later.

You're hosed. You are powerless against the sea, and you know it. Give in to the dark side, young padawan, we have waves.

By the way, you have any pictures of your boats?

You're one to talk, V. Pictures. Hah!


Nutkin, boats are fun. All work and no play sets a bad example for the little ones. Ask them whether they want a family boat or boring siding. Kids are wise. They will tell you to build the boat. Think of the fun for the whole family during the building process and subsequent messing about on the water.

Besides, it's too damn hot outside to be putting siding on a house.

But be cool about it...

... work on it forever in your basement
... play the cello
... look melancholy when you have female visitors
... have deep love-lost memories
... occasionally consult your drunken mentor

Then get an agent and start your own TV series

forgot to add: /channeling glatt/ in my previous post. I'm so bad.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I don't have anywhere near enough money to even start this project.

Great plan squirell. Sounds like fun. Go for it. There are a thousand plans out there to build one. I just sold my Old Town 164 last month for $600 with bent shaft paddles. Hated to see it go but I have not used it for years.

Ugh... I note all the male posters here telling you to go for it. Let me just pipe in with the rational, buzzkill female perspective (no doubt shared by your wife) that yes, this would be nothing but a huge money-suck, time-suck, and has a very decent chance of never even getting finished.

My husband's first muse about a boat-building project would be his last, no question about it.

.

Money aside, there's nothing wrong with having hobbies. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

You MUST be high on crack. Do you think, even for a moment, that I mentioned this to my wife?
:eek:

At this point I am content to look at boat pr0n like this:

Here are some boat building photos:

Maiden voyage with the friend whose garage I built the boat in.
Outer fiberglass on and ready to scrape the inside.
When the going gets tough, the tough get napping!

Sell the wife. Build the boat.

WTF? Skwurl, go for it. What the hell does it matter if it takes forever to complete ...it's not like anyone's waiting on it.

round here the rule is you want to start a large project, you have to find the space. Preferably not in the path between the kitchen and the front door.

I agree with monster.

Build it in your basement and make it way to big to take out the cellar door.

Involve lots of sanding.

the "find space" rule also applies to the basement. Jus' sayin'

What would the neighbors think?

Could you trade the wife for a boat?

or how about ...

Hey kids, help me get the siding on the house, then we can build a boat together and go sailing!

[naive non-parent]

Here is the first boat. It is built like a brick shithouse, 7/8" Cypress planks on 1 1/2" oak frames. The keel is a solid 6x12 oak timber. There are at least 100 lbs of bronze screws in this thing.

My buddy and I built it and when he moved out west he didn't want to take it with him and I had no where to keep it so we gave it to some old codger up in Maine. I wonder if it's still in the water.

Here is the centerboard trunk in place and most of the planks in place.

The other shot is of it under sail, a month or two later.

Awesome! :thumb:

So far I have the GREEN light on re-glassing the canoe, not much fun, but it will look great. Maybe then I can sell it and use the $ to finance the new boat.

Man you have my utmost respect. That is no easy task. I would never have the patience to do such a project.

What, re-glassing? If you saw how heinous it looked you'd want it done.

I'd rather spend the cash and be done with it. I don't have that kind of time in my life. I bought my first boat when I retired from the military. Edgewater 225. I love it. Build one? no thanks, but like I said, my hats off to ya.

Start building. If the wife enters the shed/garage/basement, start muttering about forty days of rain and two of each animal. Look up, and ask her to stockpile fodder.

When she realises you're just fooling around with a sailboat, she'll be quite relieved.

Gasp! This stuff should have NSFW on it.

User title.

So my ex tells a story about this guy who was in shop class in HS, who the teacher adored. Mr Guydude could do no wrong, apparently, and anything and everything he made was held up to the others as the be-all, end-all of fine craftmanship.

Sadly, the guy drowned. When the very distraught teacher was giving an in class memoriam, some punk guy mumbled "Fucker shoulda built a boat."

Sorry, dark humor and me...

The boat thing is cool. More talent on the Cellar. You people piss me off.

However I will end with:

The owl and the pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat.

so is this the one you are going to make?

If you do build one, you should document the steps in this thread with pictures. I've made a stitch and glue plywood kayak. I'd love to see a thread on more traditional techniques, if that's what you are doing.

You left out the next stanza.

Maybe if squirrel sings this to his wife she'll let him build the boat.:p:

I'm narrowing down my choices right now and, yes, it is all about the traditional construction techniques. I'd like to try a lapstrake boat. I'm telling myself, that's what clapboards are.

I'll post pics of the contenders soon.

Cool! Can't wait to see it. I feel the urge to do a Japanese girl clap of excitement here (jump and down pigeon toed and squeal sugoooooooooi for those not familiar with it).

Will you wear a sailor uniform while you do it? I'll sing the Australian Sailor's Hornpipe if you do.

I hit a gumption trap with the siding today so I pulled out the canoe and stripped all the fiberglass off the outside of the hull. I am now debating whether to replace the outer (and probably inner) gunwales. The ones I have on now are ash and they got pretty beaten up one year and show spalting with incipient rot so I stained them dark brown, but I hate the dark look. If I re-do them it will be either with Mahaogany (which is outrageously expensive right now) or maybe spruce. The biggest problem is that they are screwed and epoxied, so I'm not sure how they will come off. On the other hand, if they do come off it will make re-glassing a lot easier.

Either way it is a lot of work. Next up will be sanding and re-fairing the hull.

Glatt, do you have any pictures of your stitch and glue kayak? Is that like a Baidarka?

As fair a tradeoff as that sounds, me wearing a sailor uniform (or even just a Japanese girl's school uniform) would just be wrong.

Sounds like you're making amazing progress already-Is your wife on board with the boat project?

She's on board (ha ha) with the canoe re-glassing project as she likes to canoe. This is satisfying the itch for now as I not only don't have the $ to start a boat (not even funds that can be misappropriated) but until the addition is finished, I have no where to build it. Not even sure about it then.

Stitch and glue is a construction technique where you cut up thin plywood (quarter inch) into panels, and then you join them together by drilling little holes, spaced every few inches near the panel edges. You cut up some copper wire into 4 inch lengths. You bring the panels next to one another, and starting at one end, you stitch the panels together by using the wires like twist ties through the holes. As you go along, the boat magically comes into shape. You don't tighten the twist ties too tight at first, so you can adjust things a little and make the curves fair, but once everything in in the right place, you tighten it all up. The boat is pretty stiff and rigid at this point and looks like frankenstein with lots of ugly wire poking out all over the place. You flip it over and use thickened epoxy to caulk along all the seams on the inside. Backed with fiberglass tape. Once the epoxy hardens, you flip it back again, and snip off all the wires, and sand them flush with the hull. Then you glass the hull.

It's a very fast way to build a boat, and probably the second cheapest, after skin on frame, where you stretch fabric over a frame.

I built my kayak in about 40 hours, I think.

It looks pretty good, but is not as pretty as a stripper, or a lapstrake. Most people looking at it will be blown away, but you'll know that if you had spent 500 hours, you could have built a truly beautiful boat using more traditional techniques.

Pictures.

This is stitching the panels together. An hour or two of exciting progress. You start the session with some flat pieces of plywood, and a short while later it looks like a real boat.

Glue the seams with epoxy. Add some bulkheads and braces.

Flip it back after the epoxy inside hardens. Looks like Frankenstein with all those wires poking out.

Snip the wires off and sand the joints a bit. Fiberglass the hull.

I skipped the part where I nailed a 3mm deck to the hull. No pictures of that because it was a tricky process bending the plywood and nailing it down as I went.

Here's the finished boat. I was supposed to varnish it to protect the epoxy from UV rays, but I never did. It's stored in the dark, so it's been fine for the past 9 years.

Oh, and it floats.

Beautiful! I like that technique. The lines look graceful which is not always the case with plywood boats.
It's got me thinking about a kayak. How does the boat handle? Do you get to use it much?

I just discovered enough cedar in my basement to make about 136 nine-foot strips. Not enough for a canoe, but maybe a small kayak.

The boards are 11/16, by the time I mill the bead and cove they'd be a shy 5/8.

I have a book by Gil Gilpatrick where he uses 2x4 stock, knots and all and makes very utilitarian boats. Maybe I can make a hybrid.

By the way, I noted the boom box in one of the shots, it seems no construction/shop photo is complete w/o one.

The boat's in Pennsylvania, where my family has a cabin on a lake. So I use it about one weekend a year. :(

It's designed to be an open water boat, so it goes fast and straight. It's excellent on a lake or bay. It's a little hard to turn, so it would suck in a river. You have to lean to the side to lift the bottom out of the water and create a more round waterline to turn easily. Otherwise, it takes a good 30 seconds to make a turn using big sweeping strokes.

I like it. It's really fast.

What would be the cost of all the tools that you need to set yourself up for a project like this? Would the normal tools that most blokes have in their shed be sufficient or is special stuff required?

Glatt, where did you get the design?

SN, time to turn the boat desire into crazy productivity on the house with boat building as the reward... says the guy who is typing not working.

For the kayak I built, you need:
a saber saw/jig saw (a cheap one from Harbor Freight Tools will do) $20
a random orbital sander and some sandpaper (You will use this a fair amount, so you'll want to spend the $90 for a good one.)
A drill (you probably have this already, but if not, a cheap one will do) $30
A block plane $30
a hammer (you probably have one already) $10
Some wire cutters $10
Bunch of disposable latex gloves to keep epoxy off your hands $5
A respirator is a good idea when sanding epoxy/fiberglass $20
Safety glasses $4
Ear muffs so the sander doesn't make you deaf. $5

A huge variety and number of clamps is helpful, but you can make your own from plastic pipes.

I had a $800 table saw that I used a few times, but you can get around it with just the jig saw.

Griff, it's a Mill Creek 13, sold in both kit form where everything is pre-cut and included, or in plan form where you pretty much do it all youself, by Chesapeake Light Craft. The design was done by the founder of CLC, Chris Kulczycki, who later sold the company. Cool thing is that for this particular boat, Chris wrote an article on how to make it in an old issue of Wooden Boat magazine, so you can probably find the back issue at a library and copy the plans for free out of the magazine. Once you know how to do a stitch and glue boat, all you need is the table of offsets for the panel shapes.

Chris also wrote a book on kayak building that includes plans for three kayaks.

Cool re the tools one needs. Thanks

This thread is reviving my old fantasy of building my own airplane in my garage.

My wife killed that one along with many others.

I'm slipping the boat thing into my 70th year cue.

I'd really like to build a wind turbine. That's like a boat... kind of.

How big? Make magazine has an article on building a small one.

Actually, there's a better link here.

Thanks glatt, I'll check those out.

Here's a plan for a Bermuda Sloop. I built a scale model of this a few years ago and I just dug it out from under the sawdust and mold in my basement. When it is presentable, I'll post a photo of the model. I have to find the sails.

I like the "excessive sail area."

I'm probably going to build something more like this, however:

Is there enough information on those plans to actually build a boat hull?

I'm familiar with tables of offsets to cut plywood panels into the proper shape for a stitch and glue, and tables to cut forms to the proper shape for a stripper, but I'm not sure how you would turn a plan like this into an actual boat. Do you somehow take measurements off the plans to make the bow and ribs of the boat? I assume once you have that, you can just fit planking to that skeleton without a plan.

How's it work?

Not without a lot of work, there is no table of offsets, so you'd have to get a teensy tape measure and measure out all the lines as drawn, then scale them up (loft them) and then you'd still probably need to fidget a lot to get things fair.

I read somewhere "A cabinet maker builds to the nearest 1/32nd, a carpenter to the nearest 1/8th, and a boat builder to the nearest boat." Indicating the inexactness of the whole process, in other words as long as it's fair.

Here's a table of offsets for one of my top 5. (When I have some more time, I'll make smaller jpegs of the lot and post them.

The guy in the photo has a gaff rig but in the drawing it is rigged with a spritsail. I'm not too sure what the performance difference is. I don't think I've sailed a spritsail.

So is each one of those 13 stations just a plane that describes the shape of the cross section of the inside of the hull planking, or is each one an actual rib* whose shape is being described?

*I don't know the proper terms. What's one of those ribs called, where the spine is the keel?

(In other words, can you take the numbers from a station and lay them out on some stock to make one of the ribs, or do you have to do something else with them?)

Each station is a vertical cross section at that point of the hull. The stations are perpendicular to the keel. The buttocks are vertical sections parallel to the keel,spaced at one foot intervals, then there are another set of sections parallel to the waterline called waterlines.

When you look at the end view or the plan view you will see each of those lines. The table of offsets gives you coordinate points that you layout on a sheet of plywood then connect the dots to get the shape of the station.

You cut out all the stations, assemble them to the keel temporarily, then bend thin battens called ribbands, along the stations to mimic planking. Then you can determine where your ribs will go and what shape they are. You steam and bend them to shape and clamp them in position to the ribbands. When they are all inplace (mortised to the keel and everything) you begin taking the ribbands off and replacing them with planking.

That may be confusing. I may have to scan some more pictures to show.