Plans
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Cabin Wall Framing. Finally.
Whew, finally. We get to constructing the cabin walls. This is the fun part for me. As a former carpenter, framing construction is well-within my comfort zone. Initially, it looked like it would be easy as pie. I planned to simplify the standard stud construction to reduce weight: (single) sole plate + studs + (single) top plate +…
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Motor Well, A Mini-Project Unto Itself
Oh, the motor well. Seems simple enough. Build a box that bolts to the back of the boat, upon which the motor clamps. I’ve been working on the motor well since the days of the Troublesome Skegs and before the Boat Flip. Turns out that though this earns only a brief paragraph in the Glen-L…
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Fiberglass Seal Coat
We fretted over fiberglassing the hull so much, we put off beginning with this step for weeks. We read and reread our instructions from Glen-L, Ken Hankinson Fiberglass Boatbuilding book, and anything else we could find. We went over scenarios and thought of terrible things that could go wrong. We thought it would be so harrowing…
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Opinions are like assholes…
Everyone’s got one. Every now and then I’ll ask a boat-related question on a public forum or email list. It sure isn’t a problem getting people to weigh in with their opinion, that’s for sure. The challenge, actually, is picking through the dross of misunderstanding, inaccurate information, speculation, and completely made-up answers to find the…
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Cross beams
This was an exciting day because for the first time, the boat was one piece. Not just a pile of lumber. Not just a bunch of stringers. But one single solid piece that was even boat shaped. More or less. Earlier when we were making the pieces for the stringers we trimmed a bunch of…
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Side Stringers
The side stringers are the sides of the boat. So far everything we’ve been doing was stuff inside; here we finally tackle something that will ultimately keep water out. Yikes! And because of the complexity of the build and our boat-tardedness, it took us about seven hours per side to assemble. In our last build…
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Keel and Skeg Stringers
It most conventionally built wooden boats, the frames refer to what you might think of as the “ribs” of the boat running across ways (that’s “athwartship,” to you, matey!). In the Glen-L Waterlodge, the framing members run longitudinally and are called stringers. So building the boat frame means assembling the individual stringers and then tying…
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Epoxy is Stressful
You know the scene at the end of any action movie where the hero has minutes to disarm the bomb, cutting the wires in just the right sequence or he blows up the 747 full of schoolkids? Working with epoxy is just like that. In short, using epoxy involves mixing two dangerous chemicals together to…
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Angles and Precision
I have experience in the housebuilding, construction world. I used to joke with my workers when they’d talk about measurement in sixteenths. “Sixteenths? I didn’t know they made fractions smaller than eighths.” And in homebuilding, unless you are a finish carpenter, there is seldom need to take such fine measurements. Not so much in building…
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Making Sawdust
The whole process of building a boat involves cutting a lot of lumber, but at the beginning there were whole days of doing nothing but. The plans called for kiln-dried or air-dried lumber of no more than 12% moisture. I live in the hills of Northern California which at times is like living in a…
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Organization: How To Make Boatbuilding Not Suck
Boats are made of lots and lots of funny precision parts that all look more or less the same but are subtle different. A bow skeg stringer end accidentally exchanged for a stern skeg stringer end and it’s all over. The previous build day, in my excitement I threw together the dead simple building form,…
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Questions for the Old Man
I didn’t expect myself to be talking to the old man, the designer himself, bouncing my dumb ideas off him and hearing the edge of concern in his voice. I bought our Shantyboat plans from Glen-L Marine. The company was started by and named after Glen L. Witt, a boat designer who’s been designing boats…
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Boat Plans: Choices Made and Not Made
So it looks like we’re building a boat. Not merely throwing a bunch of shit on the deck of a couple pontoons, or strapping a bunch of barrels together, but making a boat. You know, one of those things that floats in the water and has things like a hull and a deck, not to…
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Math is Hard – Calculating a Waterline
Who would have thought boatbuilding would involve so much math? I was reading Glen L. Witt’s Boatbuilding With Plywood and realized what should have been obvious to me: The waterline of a boat is calculated beforehand. I guess it makes sense that boatbuilders don’t guesstimate their designs only to drop their boats into the water…
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Karaoke Doodles
So far, I’ve ignored the inside cabin layout, thinking that it would sort itself out eventually. But I got thinking, and with a few beers started doodling. I went to the normally quiet Trout Farm on Zayante Road (the same road on which we will build the shantyboat). Unbeknownst to me, it was karaoke night…
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Beyond Napkin Plans
I’m trying to turn my shantyboat speculations into something that feels a little bit more tangible. Ooo, graph paper! Getting fancy now. When I sketch it out proportionally, the shanty boat is less long and skinny than I had drawn it. In fact, it looks like a tiny shanty. On a boat. I’d kind of…
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Folding Gable Ends
We were aware that this beast with its generously gabled roof would be pretty tall. Especially on a flatbed. So I worked on some mechanism that would allow the gabled roof to fold down flat. The question is: How can you fold down the gables and then the two roof sections without anything binding? I…