building a 25 ft Tug

will update at a later time

 

i am in, as a dreamer, but i am in. i love tug, congrats.

 

hey Larry-- thanks...if you like tugs check out the designs on the website--easy to build some flat bottom...thanks for the post!

 

Hi Tugboat, Congratulations, lovely project. For sure it will give you lots of pleasure in planning and plottong how to avoid mistakes and how to put everything into place. Well done.

Does that mean that I also have to capatulate ? As soon I have done the final stability calculations, I will also have to make the final decision. I was so stupid to do the calculation in 3 dimensions and it became a nightmare. Back to 2 dimensions.

Tugboat, let us know how you will be progressing.
Bert

 

Hi Tugboat. Remember, that I mentioned about using stainless steel welding rodds on mild steel? Reading CDK's, Tom and others comment, I am puzzeld. My gate is mild steel, but hot dip galvanised, 7 meters long and I welded it with stainless steel rodds also after it was galvanised.( no idea what kind) It flexes and has all kind of forces, but after 5 years, no rust and no cracks. Moral of the story, should you use stainless steel rodds, you may have to investigate the kind of stainless steel rodds on your tug, before you really have a tug which falls apart after a couple of months.
Bert

 

...no ss welding except when attaching ss fittings....the use of Corten can be forgotten if you like, it was recommended mostly because it is more rust resistant than mild steel, so when a work boat gets dinged, it is not so much a drama. Your little play boat will be quite OK in mild steel.....look up sites here that are building in mild steel to see what rods they currently recommend....

 

Thanks Landlubber--ill do just that! The plans came with tutorials, they dont go into great detail, however he does mention something about corten and weight?..are the plates of corten lighter than mild steel?

i appreciate your post! thank you.

 

Good that you made a decision. You have decided on a commercial tug instead of a yacht tug. She will be very slow and gobble fuel but such are boats for commerical use istead of pleasure. With all that tankage you will not have much of an interior but what the hell.

You can use mild steel and regular welding rod.

 

perhaps i didn't read correctly the read plans but why the tanks are not integral? it is one of the great bonus of steel construction.
i will go to 1/4" inset of 3/16" due to the heavy displacement and the allowance for rusting away.
but i think they have now better control of protection, so perhaps what i said is obsolete.
do you have an accurate weight calculation? tug boat have low freeboard, you don't want your aft deck underwater, like it happens when we came back from a campaign, too full of fish and not having weight calculation. it is utterly dangerous, the stability is close to nil.

 

Pierre R- yea--i know its good design...and I love the look of it. The other design was a commercial design too--but just too big for my needs.
I was told my D318 uses about 2.5 gals an hour...the plan will be to push a larger barge houseboat...this will be my accomodations.

 

Its great to read about Mini Tugs. Everyone just loves tugs.. Get on with it and post pictures , so we can sit back and check it out !!!

 

every big ******** starts with a little tug

 

Yup.. all guys like to do a little tugging....and when I was just a little guy, about 45 years ago, my dad built me a mini tug. 8 feet long with rubber wheelbarrow tires around the gunnel, powered by a british seagull engine with its high thrust "multiblade" prop and a long wooden tiller handle so I could stand in the mini cabin and poke my head out of its jumbo.." SMOKE STACK" to see where I was going. I was "Tug boy" and I did some seriuos marine salvage work back in those days... back when men were men. Ahhhh...tugboats !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

haha--you guys are a riot!

 

Yea--thats probably what i should be building...sounds nice though..any pics of it?