Slocum`s Spray

Great comments and very accurate points made in the previous posts. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the points and trade-offs discussed.

Just a couple of points that came to mind as I read,

1) Having a Low stressed/low cost boat need not mean an inefficient hull design. There are plenty of low tech, well performing boats on the water - most hand built.

2) Traditional wooden boats are not better than more modern plywood or fibreglass boats in material performance, but there is a severe shortage of larger timbers for boat building. Traditional wooden boats are invariably heavier built due to the limitations of solid timber building. The makes them appear 'tough', but in actual fact, the bulk is to allow for the possible material defects. Solid timber has to allow for the undectable 'shake' or flaw found in natural materials.

Those 2 inch planks on the hull, if they were cut to 1/4", many of them would fail structurally as they came out of the saw. However, if you took all the 1/4" planks, and laminated them with epoxy, you would get a much stronger and longer lasting result. (like cold moulding, and you could then reduce the ribbing scantling dramatically )

A heavier hull may resist external impacts well, but it also creates more impact by its heavier hull - the mass of the boat makes a small impact more severe. The heavier mass also means more wear on anchor and dock gear, slower under sail and power and heavier equipment required to repair and maintain out of the water.

3) Using modern materials does not infer that you have to have a high stress/high cost boat.

 

Agree totally with all points. Personally I love laminated building, have used epoxy in laminated repairs of wooden boats for many years. At the time I built BERTIE the wood was cheap, high quality and available, I had access to a warehouse full of pre-WW2 fasteners and hardware and WEST system products were far in the future.
If I built a boat today I would probably build a 30 foot cutter using New Zealand lamination techniques (1/8 inch lams all at 45 degrees to c/l) and WEST system resins and fillers if reasonably priced planking and framing wasn't available. Here's a strip-built (no glue) medium displacement shallow water cruiser that sails very well. CHINA CLOUD was built on the beach with all hand tools in 2.5 years so she's pretty low tech.
Nigel Irens' ROXANNE (I want one so bad) and ROMILLY designs are very very nice high performing low tech boats but very expensive per ton. It's hard to make a rig light and not get expensive. Sharpies are low cost high performance boats. Did you have any specific examples in mind?

 

Just a word about timber: The disappearance of good timber is a good story made by epoxy manufacturers and designer who do not know how to design and built of timber.
Timber are in better shape than in the 1910.
But nobody wants to tackle with them, so the story crap about the disappearance of timber.
This misinformation is more to suit some industries and incompetent designer and builder.
Shame on them. But please don't repeat theses lies and false info's.
We are living in a word of information, meaning a very controlled information. A boloni information's.
I find good timber every day at good price. And I am not alone. I never in forty years felt the need to laminate due to lake of suitable timber. That do not exist. And I built my share of large and small vessel.

Daniel

 

Rwatson I never saw a timber yacht correctly built been to heavy due to overscantling for material defect. It is ludicrous to say that.
This is a very uninformed statement.
Daniel

 

I must say that by very careful selection of material a light, conventionally built timber, high-performance yacht can result. I wish to note Folkboats, International One Designs (Dragons), and Knarrs. All of these fine small yachts are conventionally built of plain old wood with little glue by using the finest select materials in small quantity, combined with exquisite design and fine craftsmanship. The IODs and Knarrs have tight-fitted and glued planking, no caulking, making a monocoque structure of immense strength for little weight, as does the lapstrake Folkboat. Very unlike BERTIE, a contrasting workboat type, which relies on tight fits and mass, though built of fine materials. BERTIE will pack at least 10 tons with little effect, though she is ponderous. The IODs, Knarrs and Folkboats will carry much less but work up a channel like an eel, wonderfully responsive to the helm. It's a difficult job for the designer to combine the two.

 

All I can say is BERTIE has been a fabulous home and comfortable cruiser for us since 1984, and she's a modified SPRAY. Living aboard with 3 kids or caught out in a bad gale, she's quiet, stable and sails well enough to get where we're going no matter what. And we're still surviving.

 

You don't have to describe the plank on frames like a precious piece of furniture or going to historic yacht, they still built it know, for a fair price, by small yard. Even the lobster boat which are light and plane are built that fashion. And they are not a piece of rare furniture.

This is typically a misinformation from someone who never designed or built a plank on frame yacht. Sorry Bataan, but if you had you will never had say that.
Why trying to put timber boat as a strange and inaccessible heavy thing?
Only the one who never designed and built them talk like that.

Daniel

 

ya I gotta second Daniel on that timber issue, granted I have some unusually good sources but I can always get the domestic hardwoods in whatever size and quality needed for a few bucks a board foot. Stuff is really cheap right now although prices are sneaking up a bit and for the most part its already cut, dried, ready to ship. Its pretty much just a mater of knowing who to call.

cheers
B

 

Sorry dude, you're quite off the mark as I never said a timber boat is "strange" or "inaccessible", quite the opposite if you'll read my posts. I have built various vessels from heavy workboats to fine light lapstrake skiffs and I know that some small yards build plank on frame boats still as I live in a town with a boatbuilding school and half a dozen good shops. I mentioned the above small yachts because I repaired so many of them. BERTIE is my design and build as are several others so I don't know where you get off saying I didn't as here's a bloody photo. As we used to say in the old days when people knew what it meant, "Stand abaft the lee taffrail there, mate", and if you don't know what that means ask a sailor.

 

Sorry DUDE I didn't wrote that.

 

For someone living where there is plenty of timber, it may appear that way. "Timber are in better shape than in the 1910." is a crazy statement, and if you care to Google the major timber producing areas of the world, you will see that even despite plantations, timber availability is reducing dramatically.

The closest comparison I can draw, from my part of the world is say Kiri - its plantation grown, light, durable - and is of $3000 per cubic metre. Thats on par with the cost of boatbuilding in foam and epoxy.

 

I have no doubt the total amount of timber available today is much less than it was in 1910. On the other hand, the number of wooden boats being built today is only a fraction of what was being built back then, when solid wood was the predominant method. If you compare supply vs demand, and convert 1910 prices to today's dollars, I'm not sure premium wood was any easier to find back then -- or any cheaper, relatively speaking.

 

I don't think I would ever say strange or inaccessible about wooden boats, and if you read my SPRAY posts you'll see I'm the first cheerleader for "built in the driveway" boatbuilding using an axe and chainsaw. Here's a photo of me hewing a 60' mast with broadax a while back. One of these takes about a week's work which seems cheap and efficient and accessible to me.
For over 100,000 years (per recent discoveries on Crete) wooden vessels have been built by poor, smart people pushed to the edge of the land by disease/war/landlords to make themselves rich by using the sea as a highway... and I am one of them.
After Vietnam some of us were very poor in a bad job market with no college or job training, we formed a Co-Op shipyard, built good boats and made ourselves "rich", in that we had a place to live and people gave us jobs building boats. Much better than the homeless VN vet life. Elitist wooden furniture boats is not me friend and you have mistaken me for another as I am a "teach it to the masses" boatbuilding guy who is convinced that the ability to design, build and successfully (nobody drowns) take to sea a wooden boat makes one a complete human being as opposed to landlubbers who see the ocean as a barrier instead of the opportunity it is.
I just penned a paean to three particular small daysailers that are very nicely executed and so last a long time. These little yachts are not furniture, but very simple high performance small yachts of the thirties/forties/fifties that are still around, so must be good. They are also actively raced with resulting busted stems, sheerstrakes and transoms from the hotly contested buoys and starts. They are easy to fix when they come in after a saturday race and out the door by tuesday and filled my paychecks for years. That's a good boat for its purpose. Very simple and accessible for most as they are reasonably cheap.
A Jonesport Lobster boat resulting from a winter's work on Jedediah's Downeast Rock & Cranberry Farm is the pinnacle of design in one direction, plain cedar and oak are all you need. Here's a picture of one of these lovely old wood Jonesport girls we found far up a slough in SE Alaska and I wish I knew her story and how she got there. Nobody seemed to know but she seemed lonely so far from home.
Where does precious piece of furniture come in? BERTIE is very much not one, but more of a Sailing Farmhouse, as one of my Maine Schoonerman friends called her.
Maybe there is a failure of comms here and you are mistaking me for someone else or I am not getting your point, and if it is my lack of understanding, forgive me, but elitist boat guy I am not.

 

I cant speak to Tasmania wood availability at all mate nor can I speak to timber quality or availability a hundred years ago, but I can say with reasonable confidence if a customer calls me today and wants mast. spar, or planking material, that I know just were to find it and at some ridiculously low prices. Buck or two a foot for most domestic species. maybe 7 for sitka and I think I was looking at 1.50 for ceder today. Not sure what they are charging you for wood there but round here its cheap and plentiful

 

An interesting way of looking at it. I did some investigation, and it doesnt look that way from my initial research.

For example, at

http://woodweekly.com/timber-economic-news/timber-has-outperformed-inflation-by-3-3-since-1910/

they quote timber prices as outperforming inflation by around 3% per annum, so we must be paying a lot more than "way back then".

I know for a fact that the availability of quality timber was much more available even in my lifetime, based on personal experience. I have a 25ft , 5" x 3" hardwood beam stored in the loft of my 100 yo shed. Nowadays, it is impossible to buy the same sectional dimension in solid timber, and nothing over 16ft in length, and that is in very basic hardwood. To get the same size timber in a quality pine or cedar, is impossible. When you say "plenty of timber here", I bet that would be in fast growing softwood plantation stock. If you have any large dimension sizes in quality native timber, I would love to hear the cubic metre price.

Using the number of wooden boats being built as an indicator is an unreliable way of judging wood consumption. This is because timber is not just used for boats, and also the population of the world has grown exponentially, as has the consumption of timber from any graph I look at.

The reason plywood, fibreglass and metal boats are so much more prevalent is a direct result of the rocketing timber prices and reduction in supply.