Wood Boat Plans And Kits | Lots of fun but no holiday!

Wood Boat Plans And Kits

Much too busy!

I have been flat out working at SCAMP Camp ( with a side expedition to the dentist to get a broken tooth fixed) pretty much ever since I got here to the Port Townsend area so have been very lax in my postings here on the blog.

We do though have a pretty good Facebook page up and running, thanks to my helpers there, thats Jackie, Pete and Chuck.  Lots to read and lots of pics.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/440526479459574/

We’re having a lot of fun at the SCAMP build class, halfway through the build class the boats are about on track with all of the frames and internal structure up, and tomorrow (Monday) we’ll be hanging the first pair of planks,  filleting  which is a seemingly endless task, fitting the cleats to which the cockpit floor and seat tops will be fitted  and organising for the second pair of planks.

By Wednesday the boats should be all planked up, “Real” boats, and this crew are doing a nice job of them.  Well done Dana, Bruce, Steve and Daniel.

The photo software “here” is not working the way I want, so please forgive the lack of pics on this post, it wants to do “Cloud” storage rather than keeping them on my hard drive, I’ll work it out.

In the meantime, its Sunday morning as I write, I had a little sleep in, and am now fiddling around learning the new sofware on the Macbook Air I’ve just bought as a replacement for my old laptop.  Nice, it runs for around 12 hours on a charge, great! The old one struggled to get 2 hours.

So I was reading some of the threads over on the WoodenBoat forum, a good plae to “hang out” when wanting some interesting reading, and found three threads on builds of my designs there that will interest.

Suzy Jackson is coming along well with her Navigator build, lots of pics there,

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?176883-Elena-a-Welsford-Navigator-cruising-sloop

Mal is making very good progress with his Sundowner,

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?148391-Welsford-Sundowner-build

This is a very substantial little boat, lots of space inside, and he’s doing a decent job of it.  Nice work Mal.

There is a good thread on a SCAMP build “here”.  Bruce in South Australia is coming along well with his little boat, and has documented the victories and trials that he’s encountered along the way.

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?182771-Romana-de-Scamp

And there is discussion on the big “Pilgrim”  open boat cruiser I designed for myself a while back but never got further than the frames before circumstances meant I had to abandon the build and find somewhere else to live and work.

The pics of Chip Matthews big curvy beauty are well worth a look.

Thanks Chip.

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?86953-Pilgrim-from-John-Welsford

I’ll be back in a couple of days, I promise.

John Welsford

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Boat Plans Arch Davis | Working on the mast for SEI

Boat Plans Arch Davis

Beefing up the mast.

Chuck Leinweber at Duckworksmagazine.com has been using a woven fiberglass sleeve to reinforce the wooden masts he’s made for the various boats he’s built.

As far as I know he’s been using fairly cheap lumber for the birdsmouth system spars, and with the glass sleeve over them there has been no failures even when pushed very hard in events such as the Texas 200 and Everglades Challenge.

Heres his catalogue listing along with a little video showing how the glass sleeve is applied.

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/supplies/cloth/sleeving/index.htm

When visiting last year I had a look at what he’s done, looked over the material and decided that I’d give the stuff a try.  So, today, got the parcel out, sanded the mast blank off a little and got into it.

Its like a Chinese Finger Puzzle, push the ends together and it gets bigger in diameter, pull and it gets skinnier.  To apply, I shoved my hand down it while pushing the ends in, made it big enough to fit the mast through easily, and slid it through.  Taped the butt end to the wood and smoothed out the glass sleeve running my hands toward the other end making it smaller and a close fit as I went.

 I put a tape around the mast at the top end of the sleeve, this to provide a clean end to cut the strands of fiberglass to.  Next, I taped the end to the mast to control it while wetting out, and got into it with a brush and epoxy.

With two layers of gloves on, I smoothed the layup out, working from the start end up to the top of the mast pushing any bubbles out as I went.

This is fairly heavy fiberglass, and it soaks up quite a lot of resin, this 3.5m length took 300ml of resin. 

To see how the sleeve would work if I were to use Peel Ply or a similar substitute to control the resin content and finish, I wrapped plastic masking tape around the lower 800mm or so ( I ran out of tape)  and checked the rest to make sure it was properly wetted out.  I’m away for two days, and will pull the tape off when I get back so lets see how it comes out.

After all this was done, I was sitting on my bunk reading and sipping my mug of tea, watching this guy sitting on the end of my dock.  He or she is a Pied Shag, quite a big bird, similar to a Cormorant.  There are lots of them here as well as their cousins the "Little black shags" and the occasional King shag.  Its that time of year when the birds are seeking mates and making nests, so there is lots of interest and activity here on the river.  

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Plywood Boat Plans Australia | News from the boatshed

Plywood Boat Plans Australia

A grumble and other things.

Just recently over on the jwbuilders yahoo group, there was some discussion about temporary shelters in which to build a boat.  There were some good suggestions, and some that don’t apply here in NZ, but one of the things that came up was a reference to the very cheap kitset garages and carports available from several distributors of same.

I’m back home on board my ship again after a couple of days at my Ex’s house.  In exchange for another consideration I had volunteered to assemble a kitset garage that she’d bought.

Its one of “these”.

https://www.tradetested.co.nz/browse/garden-sheds/garages-workshops/workshop-garage-3-45m-x-6-02m-x-2-3m-dark-green.html

I’d hoped to use the completed space to get a couple of projects done, ones that are not easy when out in the weather here in New Zealands winter but that hasn’t worked out well.

In the little time that I’ve been able to put into it, I’ve put the foundations in, got three walls assembled and stood up, have a little of the roof on and have decided that it was not going to work the way I wanted.

It’s a nightmare of a thing to build, its so lightly framed that getting it straight and true is very difficult, the whole thing is in my humble opinion so light and flimsy that its not a good deal at all.

In fact upon asking around I’ve come across several other people including two who build this sort of thing for a living who are of the same opinion, so if you’re looking for a shed, I’d suggest that look very hard before you make your choice.

So I’ve bought a heap of cheap 45 x 70 framing lumber, drawn plans and today made up five roof trusses. Harder work physically than I’ve done for a while, but they are done.

In a week or so I’ll be back and will pre cut all of the studs and plates for the walls, and if the weather (dead of winter here in the South) co operates will have the old structure down and stripped, the idea being to put the wooden frames up and clad them with the tin from the kit.

She’ll have a decent  garage in which to put her little car, and I’ll have the use of my old shop again for 12 months.

The shop here where I am living is nowhere big enough for all the machinery I have in the old shop and I’ve nowhere else to put it. I’m ok with that for the most part but gosh I miss that big bandsaw.

And the buzzer (jointer).  And the big Drill press.  And the thickness planer, and the dust extraction system, and and and – Oh well, I think that its time to get the kayak out and go for a paddle.

Design wise, John Owens of JOWoodworks   www.jowoodworks.comis working up a prototype for a kitset version of  SEI, and today I am going over the plans and the hull of my own boat to get the “as built” measurements into the plans.

I’d tried on the drawing to pinch the hull slightly midships  to reduce the length of oar required to row her easily, but the planks would not easily take that shape.

Another demonstration of the old engineering saying that goes “in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is!”.

 So I’ve a little work to do.

John Owens is hoping to have that boat at Sail Oklahoma and the Port Aransas PlyWooden Boat show,  see you there.

About subject matter on this blog. 

It was originally started as a place for me to chat with my friends and some of those who are building from my plans, and its been going for quite a while now.  Readership is fairly high, around 5 or 6000 page views a month and its been useful to be able to refer people to posts where I’ve already written on a particular subject.

On reading through the statistics, I note that the posts that attract the most readership, are those on somewhat technical matters.

Some on boats, some on machinery or tools, and some on design.  Understandable, so I’ll be working on that in future, more tool tests and I have a couple of interesting ones coming up, as well as more design work.

I’m still trying to put up a post each Friday, but don’t bet on it, sometimes life gets in the way.

See you next week.

J

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