Just out of curiosity

I'm scheming my great escape and have been researching sailboats - esp metal ones - and briefly flirted with the idea of making my own before I figured out that its much cheaper to buy a fixer-upper.

But I still want to know -

1- where do you people make these boats. Not talking about the pros with yards, but the "home builders" - Avg homes don't have the room to build a 40ft boat

2- How do you get the boat to the water? The boat must higher that 16 ft and needs some sort of permit to go on US highways - what about bridges?

3- How do you pour the lead keel at home?

4- Can a steel sailboat under 40 ft really move in avg winds?

5- Heard of people metalizing hulls with aluminium. Isnt there a corrosive reaction btwn these two dissimiliar metals?

6- Bronze thru hulls on steel - again, dissimilar metals?

 

the way I see it...if you can have a 40 ft RV next yo your house ,,why not a boat ,,,,,,had the fight with the zoning commisioner and won ,,,,,,,but as a curtisy to my neghboures ,,when painting time came ,I moved it to my fathers farm,,,look at longliner 45,for pics

 

If you don't have the room on your property to build a boat, then you have to rent or buy property to do so. Make sure your area is zoned for a building shed, and that your neighbors don't object to a boatbuilding operation going on.

There are trucking companies that will move your boat for you. If it is wider than 10' 6", you will need a wide load permit. Large new boats are generally trucked without the keel mounted on, leaving that for the last at the boat yard where it will be launched. If the boat, nevertheless, on the truck trailer is higher than 13' 6", this will affect your route to the water. You won't be able to go under bridges, and you may have to trim trees and move overhead electrical wires to get the boat through. You have to pay for this.

Pouring your own lead keel is not a good idea. First of all, you need a proper mix of lead and antimony for the strongest and most dimensionally stable casting. You will need some pretty heavy equipment to handle all the lead that you must melt, pour, and after it cools, lift. Also, lead is a hazardous substance to human health, and OSHA, if they find out about it, will shut you down pretty quickly if they find out you are casting lead without permits. Your best best is to go to a proper casting company to have your keel made. Mars Metal in Ontario is about the best. I have also had very good work done at I. Broomfield and Sons in Providence, RI.

There have been plenty of steel sailboats built under 40'. The smaller the boat, the thinner the plating, but you don't want to go much under 1/8th of an inch or the plating will buckle when welded. Then you get that "hungry horse" look in your hull. My Molokai Strait 65 and 75 motoryachts are designed for 1/4" thick steel hull plating on the topsides, thicker on the bottom and keel.

Metalizing a hull with zinc (not aluminum) does not work. It is old technology that has proven to create lots of problems later on with the zinc falling off and the steel corroding anyway. It is far better to fair the hull with epoxy fairing compound such as AwlFair, and then painting with polyurethane paint. Also, paint the inside of the hull with epoxy primer, and make sure every last little nook and cranny is covered. Touch up by hand in small spots is required. In the bilges, use a product like POR 15 to coat the bottom inside of the boat. This is a very watery paint that dries to a rubbery coating and sticks very nicely to steel. Steel boats tend to corrode from inside out and from the bottom up. (Remember the adage: "**** flows downhill and collects in corners.")

Bronze is not too bad on steel, since it has a high copper content, and your bottom paint will most likely also have a lot of copper. You will also most likely have a bronze propeller. So it is hard to escape bronze. You have to have a number of sacrificial zincs attached directly to the hull to protect the steel. On the other hand, if you want to spend the extra money, you can get propellers made in stainless steel, and you can get through-hulls made in stainless steel. You can also get anti-fouling paints without copper in them, such as TBT paints (TBT = tributyl tin) which are meant primarily for aluminum vessels.

I hope that helps.

Eric

 

Ferdous,

Do a little research on Google or get some basic books & dig in.

I am myself a proponent of steel construction. You can, if needed, build outdoors. Forty foot, and even thirty, is a lot more boat than you probably realize. Check out Bruce Roberts "Tom Thumb" series, or his smaller "Sprays". Other designers have stock plans for feasible, smaller steel designs.

Take care and welcome to the forum.

TGoz

 

Yeah thanks I was just curious how people handle the logistics of building a 40ft (or even 30ft) steel yatch. Even if you manage to haul it out of your backyard to the marina with the keel off, then you'd have to weld it on there & Marinas doesn't really allow that sort of thing anymore... It probably is really wothwhile time- and money-wise to have the hull made, maybe even have the builder pour the keel and place the enginge etc (everything short of commissioning) I can't imagine any homebuilder sandblasting a hull in their backyard.

Actually I am not going to build my own anymore - too many steel boats are for sale which only need repair. If I was to build, it would probably be origami style, 36ft max. (Dunno abouy bilge keels yet though...) I'd like a Colvin Gazelle but I am also quite taken with a Cape Dory 36 and Allied Princess (but would happily take a Triton if I can find one too) and ESPECIALLY the Bristol Channel Cutters but I first need to square away the financial issues before I weigh anchor and haul away for the next 20 years or so. Steel is of course the best but I wouldn't use anything less than 1/4 in. but in the meantime I can risk sailing around the coast with a fiberglass boat just fine.

As for thruhulls - you can I guess just weld a pipe to the hull but you'd still have to attach a bronze seacock (or one of them new nylon-fiberglass things which will quite easily melt and sink the boat if you happen to have a fire on board...or will crack in a lightening strike) Wouldn't the bronze get leached? Do they make seacocks in steel?

 

Beware of used boats, especially steel. People hold on to the well built & maintained ones. Unfortunatly used ones are often in bad shape. Owners & much more likely, brokers, misrepresent their boats condition, specs, equipment, ect.... I speak from experience having wasted approx. 2000 miles of travel and hundreds of dollars going to check 2 out.

I do not want to scare or discourage you- just warn you.

Hopefully you have access to the Colvin design you speak of. I like his work/designs. Saw one of his schooners on the Labrador Coast, in the settelment of Cartwright, I think.

Get a survey done by someone not affiliated with the seller. Have a boat knowledgable friend go with you first, before paying for a survey at approx. $500. If you do not have a "boat knowlegable friend" make it a point to find one. If you think you might buy a boat- do not skip a survey. From your post it is clear, as I think you would agree, that you are not highly familiar with steel boats.

Colvin has a book on steel boatbuilding. It is worth purchasing even if you intend to buy instead of build- alot of good general knowledge. Being in NYC you ought to be able to track one down. I'd get "Steel Away" (Smith & Noir I think) & maybe one of Bruce Roberts books also, to give you a more rounded viewpoint, as there are usually several ways to achieve a result.

TGoz

 

good advice ,,timgoz

 

Oh I most certainly would get a professional survey done by the most qualified surveyor I can get my hands on - even willing to fly him/her in and put him/her up for a couple of day if need be. It goes without saying. $500 for a survey is the least of expenses associated with getting and keeping a boat (in fact I would get a surveyor for the electrical and another for the motor too - since the usual surveyors don't really check out those systems. I knew one guy who turned on the engine and basically said, "Yup, that's an engine there.") I know a bit about sailboats bu't I;m planning on enroling in a marine technician program for 9 mos myself in addition to finishing the RYA yatchmaster so I'm not taking this lightly!

I fully expect that many steel boats have problems esp corrosion and brokers will lie. It is inevitable and I plan on being "prepared" for it - thats part of the beauty of a steel boat: most problems can usually be fixed just welded it back. Electrical/mechanical etc can all be fixed too. It just a question of being handy or having cash/time. The only real problem that can't be fixed is if there's something fundamentally wrong with the design or the construction (which is why I'm not quite sold on bilge keels - that's an awful lot of strain holding the keels out like wings (levers) and it seems to me that the self-righting ability of bilge keel boats is comrpomised, and finally I have to wonder if the boat will have a tendency to spin right over rather than slide down the side of a wave abeam - but like everything else in boat deisng there are pluses too: better performance heeled, shallower draft, etc)

Building a boat at home involves an entirely different skill set than buying and using a steel boat. I have the welding knowledge etc but not the land, space or time or tools to make my own boat = so I was just curious how the others do it. Tacking plates and welding isn't really the hardest part - itseems to me the logistics and time is the real problem. No way I could do that nor would it be worthwhile for me to do it. No wonder so many rusting project boats are laying around!