My new baby! 6.8 Meter fiber over wood fishing boat !

One hour of boiling water, no wounder marine plywood is expensive !!

Thx apex will do the test asap !

 

One hour of boiling water......................

yes, several times!

 

ok wood couldnt take the test .... the glue came apart after 2 trials ...
(forgot to take pics though duh ...)

i attached the requirements for stip plank boat ... after some discussions here is wood types i found:

Marine plywood (still looking)
D'fire / pine = Available
Hardwood = Beach wood or oak available as an alternative
WRC = Russian larch available as an alternative
Mulberry is also available as well ..

Another problem is cutting, if i am to get the exact size its gona cost A LOT, will deviation of 1 mm or so cause a problem or can i compensate with epoxy ?

So should i start some trials ?

 

The Russian Larch is a wonderful timber, though a bit heavy. It has to be one of the better qualities (which will again be a problem for you), means as free of knots as possible. Your boat is too small to accept larger quantities of flaws. We have nothing to compensate, like in a double plank build.
D/fir is acceptable too, WRC will be rather expensive (if it is the real stuff).
The Larch has my recommendation so far.
And Mulberry for the frames. (hardwood)

You cannot replace timber with epoxy that would ruin you! The dimensions have to be exact to better than one mm, otherwise you must plane them down.

We can use the ply you have at hand when we treat it with resin. Do you have a flat table and some sort of pressure to apply on a sheet or piece of ply? That can be a press, if available, or vacuum bag.
We could encapsulate the crap and add a layer of glass to provide the required stiffness.

If we don´t find the stuff we need, we produce it, but we don´t give up.

Regards
Richard

 

Yah i wiill get some samples and test it to death with lots of pics ....
WRC is not available at all only one supplier and he buys it for his own boat constructions.
So mulberry beats Beach wood and oak??

Yah making sure the size is right is gona be tough, i have little wood working experience so guess ill start learning !

No table or vacuum bag yet, the table i can get easily along with the press (more details would be great) the vacuum bag will need some searching, have not seen it in Egypt at all.

Some one in the wood business said we can actually build our own plywood if we have the proper glue (which i can get), is that an idea worth exploring?

Cheers for your feedback !

 

some updates

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/bo...ject-adventure-begins-34798-3.html#post452376

 

Right to clarify the things, i have moved the boat building to a future phase as funds are becoming scarce. So i opted to buy a ready made composite boat (wood + fiber glass / polyresin) mentioned in this thread the "Shoteya" fishing boat.
I have been in them, seen them take some beating and they still breath. Basically the wood provides the strength of the boat (mulberry frames + white wood for planks) and the fiberglass acts as the water proof sealant.
The original boat used matt strands only (around 3 layers) but i asked to add an additional wooven for better abrasion resistance.
Since labor is cheap, buying good tools is around the same cost of getting this boat (which i desperately need for fishing !) so the tools will be bought over a longer period of time.

 

Just came back from checking on my little boat ! Well it isn't not gona win any awards for quality or anything but it should be enough for fishing day trips!

Some of the frame wood (mulbery) had knots in them and will be changed.
I also changed the covering from 3 matt fiberglass layers to 1 matt, followed by 1 woven then one last layer of matt fiberglass.

I want to fit a drain plug at the end and asked the builder to make sure there is a small passage way for water to gather at the end of the boat for draining and also where i will fit the bilge pump. (The original design meant that water would get trapped between frames, making cleaning it a nightmare as well as making the bilge pump very inefficient.)

Unfortunately due to cost i left the builder to continue using polyresin instead of epoxy. (i know but local epoxy is around 10 times more expensive).
However the course white wood provides a stable material for sticking to fiberglass.
I also made sure to reinforce the aft for the engine mounts as well.

I will also see if i can get my hands on PUR paint for some abrasion resistance and UV protection.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about the boat being built with poly instead of epoxy, Vulkyn. There are a lot of boats still afloat from the days before epoxy was even available for boatbuilding. As a matter of fact, I have an old Snowbird dinghy setting in my backyard that was built in the early 1950's, and the hull and deck are still in one piece and watertight.

Unfortunately, the centerboard case was built of plywood and glassed on the outside only, and it's delaminating and crumbling. Apparently the plywood they used wasn't made with waterproof glue.

I've always been a little scared of fiberglassing, because I have no experience with it. But maybe I should man up, cut the old centerboard out and replace it anyway. It would be one way of getting a little experience under my belt, before I try taping and/or sheathing a new boat.

Keep us posted; we all like pictures.

 

Yah these boats have been used extensively by fishers for more than 10 years. If i keep it safe, clean it after day use and keep it covered should last a long time
The structure integrity is old fashioned nails and screws. The resin / fiberglass is the waterproof shell that keeps the wood nice and safe.

Here is the matte fiberglass i didnt take a picture of the woven glass though.

More pics just for you Troy

 

Interesting shape to that bow, Vulkyn. I flipped through some pictures, and it seems to be common even on larger Egyptian boats.

 

Here are some pictures i took couple of month's back on a finished boat similar to the one i am building.

The reason for the bow shape is because the fishermen need a semi flat large area to throw and retrieve their net, the other advantage is in rough weather the very high bow would help keep water out of the small boat and help it plow through. However the high bow limits visibility and on fishing boats you will ALWAYS find a small guy's head popping over the bow to make sure there are no hazards in fornt.
Ill just get a waterpoof camera and stick it in the bow

What i love about this boat is the area under the waterline is some 15 cm or so. Which enables me to deploy from very shallow waters, i do however need to add stabilizers below water line to keep rolling at a minimum.
It's also very light and convenient for deployment, fiberglass boats seem like dinasours in comparison.
So yah composite ftw \o/.

And troy take a leap of faith ! That old boat is a treasure, put it back together and make sure u post some pics would love to see it !

 

I researched the Snowbird when I got it, Vulkyn, and found a claim somewhere on the internet that it was the first production fiberglass sailboat in the country. I don't know whether that's true or not.

The company that built it is still in business, although it strictly makes powerboats now. I emailed them, and apparently there was no one left who knew anything at all about the Snowbirds. Nor were they interested in digging through old records, if they had any.

Looking at it, I'd say a wooden boat was used as a plug to make the mold for the hull. And I've found a few references to wooden snowbirds, although I have no idea if they were made by the same builder (there's also a completely different boat out there that's called a Snowbird, if I remember right).

It's cat-rigged with a cedar mast and one large triangular sail, but the sail I have has been cut down drastically, to the point I'm sure it would affect the balance.

Occasionally I see used Snowbird sails for sale online, though.

 

Well, waddya know. I just did a quick search, and found a page complete with pictures. It's built by the same company, and sure looks like the same boat.

Apparently, whoever told me online the fiberglass version was built in the early 1950's was wrong... or this page is wrong. If the page is right, there were only 28 of the fiberglass ones made, starting in 1961.

As you can see, it carried a lot of canvas for its size.

http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_ID=5873

 

Another picture, of a fleet of wooden Snowbirds. I guess I've had that thing more years than I realized; there didn't used to be this much information online, but the internet keeps expanding.