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:


http://www.saunalahti.fi/%7Ehvartial/dinghy44/114_1485.JPG


http://www.saunalahti.fi/%7Ehvartial/dinghy44/116_1608.JPG


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 (http://www.saunalahti.fi/%7Ehvartial/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,

[Ike]

You are completely ignoring the RCD. Even that itty bitty boat would have to have level flotation to comply with the RCD, as well as a capacity label. Yes you can specify only lakes and ponds but who listens? 25% of fatalities in boats in the US are in Jon boats. It's pretty obvious they are intended for flat water but idiots use them anywhere they please even the open ocean. "never underestimate the power of human stupidity" (R. A. Heinlein).

Look here. New Boat Builders Home Page http://newboatbuilders.com It's aimed primarily at the US but there are links to European standards. And business models are pretty much the same anywhere.

You can be sued for anything if the courts allow it. I don't know UK law but in the US they use the legal principle of strict liability. In a nutshell, if you made it, you are liable. Warnings help to protect you but not 100%. I've ssen some cases that would make your head spin. It makes you wonder what the judge or jury was thinking.

But your idea is sound. Build on spec at first. That is, build a boat and sell it. Then when you begin to build a good rep, orders will come in to the point where you only build to order. If you build a good product AND (just as important) take care of your customers, then your business will grow. But it doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. And realize, no one gets rich building little boats. Some people make a living at it. If you can do that you have succeeded.

[safewalrus]

More or less what I was trying to say Ike!

I note with the 'pea' it would only need somebody to cough heavily and you'd be damp! What that picture don't show is how much water he has underneath when he stood up! Or did he just step into it from the water - all 10 inches of it - pretty flat to ain't it? Trouble is now somebody has seen the designer stand up in it some nutter will try it - it totally inappropriate circumstances and over she'll go - sue, sue, sue!!

Of course if you have plenty of money to throw away.......

[fishy1]

http://www.rya.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/56DC5D3D-6163-4733-A92D-E9E85C107371/0/1RCDComplianceGuide.pdf

As the boats I'd build, at least my first few, would be less than 2.5m (8.33'), the RCD would not apply. Anyone with knowledge of UK law know if I can write something up that means if the boat is used incorrectly, I'm not liable? Is there some kind of liability insurance that would pay out if I got sued? If someone for example didn't paint it or maintain it, and it fell apart, am I liable?

[kengrome]

I note with the 'pea' it would only need somebody to cough heavily and you'd be damp! What that picture don't show is how much water he has underneath when he stood up! Or did he just step into it from the water - all 10 inches of it - pretty flat to ain't it?I posted the page with links to his two videos. You didn't look at them, did you???

Those video might change your mind about the boat's stability ... and even if they don't, Hannu's write-up about the boat provides a lot more information than the photos I posted ... :cool:

[Ike]

We aren't lawyers here, but in my many years at the USCG Boating Safety Officer we spent a lot of time dealing with liability lawyers looking for someone to sue.

One of the first things I learned from them was that a waiver of liability is worth about as much as the match to set it on fire. Any decent lawyer, (let me rephrase that) any lawyer who knows the law, can still sue and make it stick. You are talking about product liability. If someone gets hurt or dead and the lawyers can show that there was some safety defect (let's leave what a safety defect is alone for now) you are going to pay. If you go to a boat show and look at boats you will see warning labels all over them. Every one of those labels is there for three reasons, one is to protect the consumer, another is to protect the manufacturer, and the third is because some fool did something stupid and sued the manufacuter and won.

Don't get me wrong here. There are safe boats and there are unsafe boats. The unsafe boats should not be sold to the public, and it was my job to keep them out of the market. Anyone who sells an unsafe product should have to pay the injured party. BUT if you build a safe product, that meets all the applicable standards, and you have taken into account all the reasonably foreseen hazards (lawyer speak) someone can still blame you. Whether they win or not depends on a lot of variables, but as I said there have been soem crazy desicions made. I can site quite a few of them, but it would take up too much space here.

The best thing to do is build the best damn boat you can, comply with whatever standards that apply, have a really good owners manual that lays out all the do's and don'ts, and then pray to almighty God that you don't sell one to someone really stupid. Even the stupid can hire a good lawyer. But it is almost impossible to protect yourself from every possible instance of liability. If you don't believe me ask some of the big volume boat manufacturers like Bayliner, Searay, Wellcraft or Chris Craft. They have all had to deal with this. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depends on how you look at it) the fewer boats you sell, the less chance this will happen.

Oh yeah just a PS, if you build and sell boats without getting liability insurance then you're exposing yourself. Unfortunately it is relatively expensive. If you are member of a trade association like NMMA, CMMA, or the British Marine Federation, they insure you. But the membership cost is usually too expensive for the part time builder.

[tinhorn]

It may be time to visit this thread (http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21222). Years ago, farmers banded together in co-ops to take advantage of the strength in numbers, but without giving up their autonomy.