Redneck...10 hours and $75.00 start to finish

It sounds like a guitar I had that I left in the car one winter night, the sides must have shrunk and the cross bracing didn't so they just poked right through the sides. Unlike your boat, the strings also shrunk and created so much tension the neck broke loose from the body of the guitar. But like in a sailboat, I wonder if the same doesn't happen, the rigging shrinking and creating too much tension and end up driving the mast down and deforming the cabin top or the hull.

 

Launched - 13 Sept 2010

Scrapped - 3rd October 2012 -


A good try, but a valuable example of how spending the time money and effort in doing it properly with a proven design always gives a better result.

 

1. Every design is unproven until it is built. 2. There wasn't anything wrong with the design just the implementation. 3. I started the whole cross piece thing because I wasn't happy with how wide the chine section was... I wanted it about 1/2" wider. I jammed the 2X in and made a hard spot that pushed on the ply improperly. I noticed and disregarded the slight bump in the ply when I was painting it. With Sun, weather and moisture changes the 2x swelled and contracted enough to crack the paint and eventually the surface ply on the outside of the boat and allow water to penetrate and start the rot cycle. My work cycle of 2 jobs 70+ hours a week and only one day off every two weeks caused me to ignore the boat for extended periods of time so the rot had time to set in. I noticed it late last spring but didn't get around to doing anything about it. I built a similar boat 8 years ago that is still going strong out of the same type of materials, although I had help and took a bit longer doing it. There are pictures on my site under Poorboy. It is slightly smaller at just over 9 ft long. This boat would still be fine if I hadn't done one stupid thing... try to stress the material into doing something it couldn't and then leaving it instead of fixing it.

 

I found out a long time ago that it isn't a good idea to force wood (even plywood) into doing something it doesn't want to do.... it generally has strong ideas of its own.

My opinion from a distance is that you can blame the cracking strictly on the pressure point, without bringing in movement of the 2x4. Your average piece of solid wood does almost all its shrinking and expanding across the grain, and I doubt a 2x4 that short would grow enough to measure from getting wet.

I'd say the plywood started letting go almost immediately, as shown by the hard spot you noticed while painting, and just kept going over time. Of course, if it had been protected from the weather until you had time for it, it probably wouldn't have gotten rot into the cracks. You could probably have patched it up and kept it going for years, with a funny little kink in the side that only you would notice.

By the way, I thought my job schedule was extreme. I don't even want to try yours....

 

Believe me... I don't like doing it myself. I have backed off some... in 2010 I had a total of about 19 days off the whole year... including my vacation of 10 working days over two weeks. I would dearly love to work 40 like some other people but that is still a few years away. Turning 50 in a couple of weeks and I want to be working 40 before I hit 60 (or 6 ft under) that is for sure.