(Part 2) Top products from r/boatbuilding

Good books, with some notes:

Dierking's Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes Excellent reference for building any plywood boat, but you should be careful. This book will seduce you. Gary's an expert on making a single outrigger boat that works, is pretty, and is fast and easy to build. You'll buy the book to read and end up the next weekend heading off to Lowes to buy plywook, and ordering an epoxy kit from Raka. These boats are faster and more capable than anything but quite a big monohull, are simple to build, you can sail them yourself, on most of them you can take someone out with you, it's hard to see why anyone would build a ever build 15' dinghy instead of an Ulua or a Wa'apa, honestly, unless there was a racing class they wanted to get into. Highly recommended.

Payson's Go Build Your Own Boat Very good, very readable, some stuff that I still wonder about. Edge nailing into 1/4" ply, for example. How was that supposed to work? But the basic ideas of get it done fast and go sailing still apply.

Stambaugh's Good Skiffs Good, readable, interesting introduction to traditional heavy skiff construction as well as stitch and glue. The traditional methods are usually ignored, but if I were going to build a skiff I wanted to keep in the water I might pick that. The heavy skiffs sail really well, are enormously strong, are self-righting, they have a lot of advantages.

Andrew C. Marshall's Composite Basics Good intro to composite work. Technical but readable. Good reference.

Gougeon Bro's On Boat Construction Classic, necessary. Very good coverage of all kinds of stuff, really good.

Russell Brown's Epoxy Basics: Working with Epoxy Cleanly & Efficiently Expert level epoxy tricks. This is the stuff that will amaze people at the next messabout. Read the Gougeon Bro.'s book first, then read this.

Michalak's Boatbuilding for Beginners and Beyond Good. Kind of basic stuff, but if you need a book on figuring out centers of effort and basic rudders and boards and stuff it's fine. The boats are plain and kind of simplistic, but they sail fine. For the most part they don't go to windward in any kind of impressive way, but really who wants to be bashing to windward all the time anyway? They're not racing boats, and for dinking around they're great. Don't build his proa; no one ever has, and there's probably a reason for that. The rest of the boats range from fine to quite good (the Laguna is probably the best of his designs).

Bolger's Boats With An Open Mind Classic, great. A must-read. Even if you never build one you'll learn a huge amount from this.

Other Bolger books: 30-Odd Boats, Folding Schooner: And Other Adventures in Boat Design. Anything he wrote is worth reading. I mean, not the novel, but any of his boat books.

Parker's The Sharpie Book Very good intro to sharpies of all sizes.

Little known classics:

A 30', $6,000 Cruising Catamaran : Built, Sailed and Written About Hardcover – 1987 by Roy F. Chandler
I mean, don't pay $48 for it, but if you see a copy in a used bookstore it's worth a few bucks. Some of his 'tricks' for saving money don't translate very well ("My friend gave me this huge bucket of stainless hardware", hey, good idea! I'll try that), but it's a good general outline of turning a worn out racing cat into a small cruising cat on not much money.

Finally, for a lost classic: Chapman 's The Plywood Boatbuilder Vol 41 Excellent and readable look back at what early plywood designs and construction looked like forty years ago. I wouldn't build any of these, there are better designs around now, but it's fascinating to see how the thing developed. Designs for prams and dinghys, sailboats, outboard, runabouts, 47 designs, sailboats from 13 ft to 24 ft.

But really, a great and cheap way to read a lot about boatbuilding is to get hold of old copies of Wooden Boat or some of the other boating publications. You can often pick up a stack cheap or free. In depth articles, lots of pictures, I learned a lot from stacks of ten year old mags people gave me. In fact, I have a big stack of Wooden Boat and some other stuff I need to get rid of right now. Anyone want them? Free to good home, paypal me back the shipping when you get them. Send me a PM if you're interested.

Yep it's pretty thick haha, but for your practical purposes you don't need to concern yourself too much with the complex math and calcs. I have no idea how versed you are in Naval architecture or engineering so skip what you already know and forgive me if some of this is obvious to you, but start with making sure you understand the definitions of everything in section one and then section two is what you're looking for. Simple stability. Make sure you understand the equilibrium conditions and the forces and moments that govern them, and the concept of metacentric height. For what you're doing that will be more than enough to make a simple model to roughly ensure you'll be stable. Take the hull you're wanting to build and make a general representative shape to make the calculations easier, i.e. A typical v-hull fishing boat could be simply modeled as a box on top of a triangular prism for simplicity. Down at pages 121 and on there are some simple examples that will illustrate what you'll want to do if you are going to calculate stability. You could also of course just understand the principles and "eyeball" it for s small boat like you want to build. If you are though interested in serious naval architecture I suggest applied naval architecture by zubaly. It's a very practical and straight to the point text that's presented in a logical order and understandable way in my opinion, although there are a few other texts that are considered the bibles of NA as well. Good luck and hope the dinghy turns out great!

https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Naval-Architecture-Robert-Zubaly/dp/0870334751

I don't think you should buy any epoxy for that project because I don't think you should build it. It is an ugly boat and I believe it is beneath you.

A well-made wooden boat is a beautiful thing. It is not beyond your reach to create, regardless of the skills you start with. You might send a few planks to the scrap pile and fling a clamp or two across the shop, but think about what you'll have in the end. Instead of settling for something you can knock together in two days, take a little more time. Learn the skills. Read the books. Watch the YouTube videos. And at the end, you'll have something rad AF like a Banks Dory or a skin on frame canoe or a cedar strip dinghy.

When you've finished, you will step back and be proud of your creation. This is a wonderful feeling. And the rest of the world will have one more beautiful thing to admire.

You can do it, brother! Be bold, and Mighty forces will come to your aid!

Ian Oughtred book is excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Clinker-Plywood-Boatbuilding-Manual-Oughtred/dp/0937822612

John Gardner book is also great: https://www.amazon.com/Dory-Book-John-Gardner/dp/0913372447/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492717229&sr=1-2&keywords=john+gardner+boat

Kit boats are excellent intros, Chesapeake Light Craft is a good provider.

Boatbuilding classes are great too, Piediver suggested a good one

> Any suggestions or ideas (or better yet plans or tutorials) would be greatly appreciated.

1. Start by building scale models. You can learn 90% of the essential concepts of boat building very quick and cheap this way. And, you can actually end up with a successful full size built boat more quickly by learning first by building small scale models. They can be simply made of cardboard and tape, too.
   
   
2. Read a couple books. I recommend Jim Michalak's Boatbuilding for Beginners and Instant Boatbuilding with Dynamite Payson. You can expect the price of both these books to be paid back via saving you a costly mistake.
   
   
3. Avoid the temptation to be a boat designer. At least at first, stick with a well known tried and tested popular design of a well respected boat designer.

i'd guesstimate the hull length to be around 30ft. I'd say it's closest to some sort of racing (as opposed to cruising) trimaran, so if one were to copy that thing exactly, there would probably be minimal hull volume. More like a bunch of gigantic kayaks than anything else.

I'm currently finishing up a small skiff- cheap, and I've learned a lot about the process. If you want to start boatbuilding/sailing, there's a lot of nice options. When I was doing my research, I somehow got a PDF of Gavin Atkin's Ultrasimple Boatbuilding, and would recommend.

With regards to having space, there's a bunch of designs under 8ft that would fit indoors, and I've seen some people simply add shelves in winter.

Also, one of the simplest 8ft boats I've seen is the PDRacer (or OzRacer). Looks like a box, but teaches the skills, and apparently sails astoundingly well for its looks.

I highly recommend Devlins boatbuilding easy to read and understand with loads of really good info that will help you realise your plans. http://www.amazon.com/Devlins-Boatbuilding-Build-Stitch---Glue/dp/0071579907/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462641662&sr=8-1&keywords=Devlin+boatbuilding

I ended up picking up this plug cutter, super excited to try it out. Thanks for the simple answer for a wood working noob.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000P4NNN2/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

West 105/207 is pretty tame, Just keep plenty of ventilation and all will be well. As how to b uild this book is probably the easiest to follow and comes with full size plans , my daughter has built 2 out of it for her shop class.

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Second-Revised-Expanded--Build/dp/1565234839/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473631025&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+build+a+canoe

> Building a Strip Canoe by Gil Gilpatrick

This one is excellent for strip canoes.

Also The Aleutian Kayak by Wolfgang Brinck, if you want a nice sea kayak.

Buehler's Backyard Boatbuilding (Amazon Link) -- apparently there's an updated version coming out later this year.

Grab it from the library and give it a read; he has some interesting thoughts on boatbuilding, including interiors.

He has a few websites as well - this is his main. Web design is not one of his talents, but it's more than made up for with his designs.

Don't do that to yourself.

If it's a sailboat , get Lars Larssen's "principles of yacht design" https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Yacht-Design-Lars-Larsson/dp/0071826408

Or look for it in a local library.

It has everything, hull, sails, even how to make it so that it fits on a trailer.

In any case, if you will build a boat, you're going to buy a lot of material. Invest in a good book.

Thanks for details. I bet if you added some adhesive velcro to your PFD cushion and to the top of your cooler you might be able to fix that sliding problem. Another option might be to put down bit of non slip shelf liner between the cooler and cushion.

Link to the book

You may also peruse his blog where he talked about his project.

I was always intimidated by fiberglass until I started working with it.

West System Epoxy is easy (their measured pump system is genius).

Don Casey's Book got me started.

If I can't find the right mount I'll do this.

For the evinrude I'm going to buy a condensor, points breaker kit, and a new plug wire. If that works I'll do the carb and water pump.

If that doesn't I was thinking of grabbing one of these 3.5hp 2 strokes

Gloucester gull if you boat in anything that resembles open water. I have the used the same one for >30 years. Moderate wood working skills, a decent table saw. One piece (the 2.5 foot long stem) must be cut on a band saw. it was the first boat that I built from scratch. The only recommendation is to add a cant frame between the gunnel and seat riser for the front and back seat as it is a high stress point and tends to crack without them.

I used to take my wife and two sons out in it until they were about 5 and 8. Probably >500 pound capacity.

Here is a link to a book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0937822043/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

and plans.

http://www.mcssl.com/store/hhpaysoncompany/downeast-dory-plans/gloucester-light-dory

Chesapeake Light Craft has one that is a little bigger. The advantage to them is that you can buy kits.

http://www.clcboats.com/shop/boats/rowboats/northeaster-dory-rowing-sailing-kit.html