More silly questions in building my boat

It's good to be alive and having a phone number is just icing on the cake.

 

Hi Lewis (is that your name? Sorry if it isn't), thanks for the feedback! I'm probably describing what I've done badly, and giving you a bad idea of what I've done so far. You may have also seen an older post of mine from a couple years ago where I built a very small rowboat.

I think I made a mistake in building it, first of all -- you're right in that I made the hull out of four pieces. I must've mistakenly read at some point that I was supposed to do that, and I actually was wondering why. So...yeah, big mistake on my part. But I epoxied it so it's one full piece now, the way it should be.

By the way, I should say that I'm not accusing you! I'm grateful for the free plans, I think it's just mostly my inexperience that's causing the trouble. So, here are a few pictures of where my boat is now (please don't laugh!):






Any advice or suggestions would be very welcome!

 

Thank you for the pictures... now I can see what is going on. First bit of advice... back that seam running down the middle with a solid piece of wood on both the inside and the outside. Make it a sandwich. Use 1x4s or 1x6s to do it. You have to make sure that joint is stable. Otherwise it looks good. Sorry you used so much epoxy.

 

Hi Lewis, thanks for the reply, and I'll do what you suggested! Would you mind helping me with a couple more questions?

When you say "flat bottomed", you mean just that it doesn't have a Vee, right? But it should have a small rocker, right?

Does our center mold look good?

Something else that's worrying me is the part with the stem. Your directions have this as the diagram for the stem (obviously not to scale):



But you can see from the following picture of the bow I made (simple trig to get the the correct angle, ~16) that the angle is nowhere near 16 degrees, even without the center mold in. I think I made the mistake of stitching with zip ties before screwing the sides to the stem, but I haven't ruined anything because I haven't epoxied or screwed anything (just zip ties). But still, a total angle of 32 degrees for the stem seems very small...what am I missing?



I have many more questions, but I don't want to push my luck... thank you for the replies!

 

how far from the tip of the bow do you want the after edge of the breasthook? My suggestion is to measure the same distance on the bottom panel and then find the width of the bottom panel at that point. Make the breasthook's after edge about 1" narrower than the bottom panel.

The center mold looks good. It is just there until you get the seats and other stuff in so the sides stay at the right distance and flare.

Flat bottomed is flat from one side to the other... the boat needs rocker to handle properly and be efficient. Ideally the transom should just be out of the water at the normal load and trim.

I will be gone for the next 10 days or so but I might be able to drop in Monday. See you in about 10 days

 

Any additional news on this?

 

Yep! Finished! I'll make a thread showing it soon!

 

Steve, do you have performance predictions for Poor Boy (I'm assuming that's this boat), with different engines?

 

Poor boy?

 

Well... this is a DuckSkiff which is about 14 ft long and has two versions. The Planing version could wear up to 20 hp (per USCG) however I expect it would be fine up to 25 hp which is easier to find. I expect you would see 23-28 mph with a 25 hp and a min of 9-10 hp would be needed to get it to plane decently (14-16 mph) with one person and some gear.

The rowing version would need 2-5 hp depending on load and how high you want to wrap the motor. It wouldn't be expected to plane. It should see a top speed of around 5 mph. The above picture is only a trolling motor and I expect it is going at least 3 mph.

Declan is doing the rowing version, however I expect he will use a motor on it too at some point in time.

 

Yeah, I was looking into a dinky motor like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Minn-Kota-Endura-12v-30lb/dp/B00CRGRIBE/ref=pd_sim_sg_1

Does anyone know if that one is worth the money?

Thanks!

 

Yes on Steve's plans. Especially if the user is an 'older' guy like me with bad balance.
If I EVER get caught up, I'm building Steve's Jon Boat.