Part time boatbuilding?

[fishy1]

I've made a couple of small, dinghy sized boats, but I'm still a beginner. I notice on a few websites, people are selling these for good sums of money (£2000 was one I found, looked well done but was pretty similar to mine, but slightly longer). I like stitch and glue boatbuilding, and it's fairly simple and would be fairly cheap to startup properly. My plan was to build a small boat, under 5' but only just, then sell it on ebay. The idea would be for a kinda upmarket version of the dreadful inflatables you see on ebay. The reason for under 5' as anything below this price, I can post for about £14, anything about that and the price of postage jumps to about £80! How much do you reckon I could get for one of these? Also, 5' is too small to qualify for the EC legisation, saving cash. The small size means I should be able to get one out of a sheet of 6mm ply.
When I've sold it, I plan to build a couple more, making a bit of money. Then, hopefully I'll be able to build larger stuff, in the region of 10' and expand from there.

Does anyone have advice on:
Where to sell? Newspapers? Ebay? Other?
Where to buy a drum of epoxy?
I've got a source of decent marine ply for £20 a sheet in 6mm. Is this fairly reasonable?
Any ideas on how to get space for buying larger boats? I have a pretty small shed, which I could get a small boat in, but I'd need larger premises to go bigger. Would anyone have ideas on cheap places for this? What prices would be reasonable for a 16' by 10' or thereabouts shed per week in Scotland?
Paint: Do I use decent quality gloss or marine stuff? Gloss is alot cheaper and reputedly as good. Recommended no of coats?
This EC legislation? I tried reading it but got confused, and it didn't seem well written. Does anyone have a guide for which parts are applicable for small scale boatbuilding?

Thanks for all your help. I love boats and building stuff. I'm pretty decent with woodworking etc, but I know you lot are alot of experts on boats.

[tinhorn]

I like your idea. This is how I got into the kit car market back in the day - starting small, spare time, out of a single car garage. After five years I ended up with five molds. When I made $40,000 in the fifth year (still part-time working out of that single car garage) my now-ex-wife cleaned out the company checking account and moved in with a boyfriend. I think there may be a couple of lessons here somewhere.

Are you sure you want a drum of resin? Resin has a shelf life. If you're building small boats, and just part-time, maybe 5-gallon pails will be a better option. Helps with cash flow, too.

[fishy1]

True about the resin. I have very limited funds at first, so was thinking of buying maybe about 5l to do the first boat, then using cash from that to buy epoxy in bigger volume.

[tinhorn]

Good call. For a small enterprise, lower profit margins won't kill the business, but getting up-side down on your cash flow might! Keep "the nut" as small as possible.

Best of luck on your endeavor!

[fishy1]

And BTW, does anyone know of a decent design that could be scaled down?

[safewalrus]

Do you mean '5 feet?' - in this country that little single apostrophe means feet, the double means inches, outside of a boating lake what 5 feet long boat is usable? or safe? Build a 5' boat some idiot will try to use it in the sea - dead! who sold it? you did! who will get the blame for the idiots death - think about it!!

[fishy1]

5 feet is what I meant. Surely it would be significantly safer than those flimsy inflatibles(http://www.sailgb.com/p/challenger_inflatable_boats/) ? Could I not just specify it was for ponds/small calm lakes? I was thinking of a similar but slightly shrunken version of this, http://www.gsahv.pp.fi/dinghy1/simboii.htm, as being ideal as a 1 person fishing boat in calm waters, as well as being light and actually looking boatish.

[safewalrus]

People kill themselves easily on flimsy 'contraceptives' motorised or not! (luckily they only ever do it once). If overloaded they tend to roll over before going anywhere - the solid bathtub gets halfway then sinks.........people will do the stupidist things..........

[fishy1]

Would I be open to being sued if I stated clearly that it had a max weight limit of X and was only to be used in sheltered lakes/ponds?

And BTW, do you know any courier who takes boats in the UK? All I can find don't like anything above 1.5m.

[safewalrus]

Probably not but a bad NAME is worse!! Your repertation / name sells boats if it's good, if it's bad....................................................you don't

[fishy1]

But they wouldn't be badly constructed, they'd be well made, lightweight, portable, safe when used how recommended. I'd be interested to hear other's views on this. And does anyone have ideas on transporting them, as I live in a remote part of the country and the 5' lenght was so I could send them royal mail, as it's cheap to post. However, if anyone knows of a method of transporting larger boats by courier etc, that would be great and I wouldn't have to stick to 5'ers to start.

[safewalrus]

Which part of Wales did you say you built these coracles in then? Tippy little craft unless used by an expert aren't they? Won't catch on with the 'great unwashed' you can't put a stonking great motor on them!

[fishy1]

I have, incedentally, built a coracle, however not in wales.

[kengrome]

I was thinking of a similar but slightly shrunken version of this, http://www.gsahv.pp.fi/dinghy1/simboii.htm, as being ideal as a 1 person fishing boat in calm waters, as well as being light and actually looking boatish.

Since you like Hannu's small boats, why not build a stretched version of his Half Pea:








As you can see, this little boat -- which is really only 4 feet long -- is actually stable enough for Hannu to stand in! He even has a couple of videos of this boat (I call them his "rock and row" videos) on this page:

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~hvartial/dinghy44/dinghy4.htm

You should be able to make a nice little 5 footer by stretching Half Pea 25% in length. I'm not sure it would ever be big enough for more than one person though ... but sometimes a one-person boat is all a person needs.

[fishy1]

I would never put more than 1 person in a 5' boat. The halfpea needs really thin plywood, and even then the curves are hard to bend. Plus it has quite a lot of parts to be glued, upping expense,