First time building

I found 'Wooden Boat' in my newsagent recently and now NEED to build a boat. A couple of questions though - the simplest method seems to be 'stitch and glue', is this the case? I haven't built a boat before but have done a lot of other projects so feel I might be able to do one. I live near the sea (east coast of Ireland, can be choppy) and a lot of the plans for boats on the websites seem to be for calm fresh water judging by the attached photographs. I particularly fancy the Glen-L TNT 11' plywood runabout but would anyone be able to tell me if this would be suitable for using in the sea? Finally would I be better off starting with a canoe or kayak first? Any advice or suggestions appreciated.

 

Hello. It would seem to me that your best bet if you want to build a boat for use in coastal waters on the east coat that you could easily built your best bet would be some sort of plywood stich and glue job. Are you looking for a boat that you would use an outboard with,sail or row? There are many good free plans out there but you would have to be a bit speciffic.

I have built a few dinghys in the past couple years and they have turned out pretty sucessful. Although I don't get much use out of any of them any more as I am taken up with an old wooden 30ft at the moment.

Have a look around on the web for plans and building techniques. You can build a boat for anything from €100 up, depends on what you want.

There are tons of sites out there but these have helped me a lot. For some pretty good minimal boat boat stich and glue plans have a look at:
http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/gsahv/

Or for loads of links look at:
http://home.clara.net/gmatkin/design.htm

 

I don't think you would need to start out with a canoe or kayak unless that is what you wanted your first boat to be.
The TNT looks to be a really neat little boat, but I would suggest switching to the 11 foot utility or the 15 foot Nimrod for a boat to be used on the sea, mostly because they have more carrying capacity and can be useful for other things than just zipping about on the water.
Have fun.

 

Thanks for the information, I would hope to build a boat for an outboard, I have a Yanmar 27hp diesel outboard on a Shetland 535 at the moment, an unusual motor but it weighs 100 kgs so it may be too heavy for my first build. As a matter of interest where did you get your timber in Ireland? Your sites have given me plenty to look at, thanks again.

 

There aren't many diesel outboards out there at all and I'd it would be fairly heavy for any sort of small boat. In my opinion you would be best off building a small powerboat for your first build. Keep it simple though and don't over complicate things.

I built with mainly with marine ply that I bought in builders providers. It is pretty hard to get any stuff that's half-way decent without going to a lot of hassle. Any frames or trim I used pine or any stuff I had laying around such as oak, ash or deal. While most of these aren't the best marine woods they are all I had.

If you are looking for hard-woods such as mahogany or teak you will be very hard presses to find them and if you do they will be really expensive. Keep an eye out for scrap such as really old pianos or boats though and you might be lucky.

Depends what you want to build but I would recommend you stick with marine ply if you can and avoid having to spend loads of money and time getting wood of high enough quality for planking.

 

Thanks for the advice, I had a look at your previous threads, did you ever manage to do anything about putting a diesel engine into a bike?

 

To tell you the truth I couldn't find a suitable engine at all. There are only a handful of diesel outboards out there. Diesel engines tend not to be that small usually, as you know, except for generators.

I sort of lost interest in the whole thing when I couldn't find an engine.