Building a skiff

[Robinson]

MSA, thanks for taking the time to explain all that -- it's cool to have the extra context and it helps with understanding your project.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Oh that was entirely my pleasure...all I need is an excuse to start talking. You did me a favour by asking.

[rdtompki]

I've enjoyed a good percentage of this thread, but I'd like to ask if I'm the only one who on first encounter read the title as "Building a SCIF"?

[AKDoug]

@Maple Syrup Actual -- it has been fun and interesting following this thread, but there is something I am curious about. You've been showing us the process, materials, challenges, etc... involved in building this craft by hand. How much would the process differ for a boat built by a commercial manufacturer? Would the materials and steps involved be similar but with less hand operations or would they be completely different? And how would the end product differ, other than the satisfaction of doing this yourself by hand?

If you are more interested and have Facebook, there is a guy close by to me in Alaska that is producing boats by the same method, just bigger than this one. He can be found at Cook Inlet Boats LLC on FB.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

If you are more interested and have Facebook, there is a guy close by to me in Alaska that is producing boats by the same method, just bigger than this one. He can be found at Cook Inlet Boats LLC on FB.

Very similar techniques - the Tolmans are total Alaska cult boats, for anyone not into boats or from Alaska.

There's structural design differences between a Tolman and what I am doing but they're pretty technical. If I had to describe the difference without getting into absurd detail I'd say the Tolmans are like a traditional body on frame vehicle and I'm building a unibody. But they're very similar. The Tolmans are proven, great performers. The designer was putting the early Tolmans together around the time that Jacques Mertens was designing his first commercial plans in this material. The revised ones like the Widebody and Jumbo were influenced by the Mertens C19, I believe. The hulls are almost identical, they only differ in the specifics of the construction, which on the Tolman is more a hull on a frame than a stressed skin. But their performance is nearly indistinguishable from each other, there's basically no practical difference.

If you built a Tolman upside down, used no fasteners, lighter plywood but heavier, biaxial laminates and lighter stringers, pulling the strength from the biax... they'd be the same exact boat, the Tolman and the original Mertens. It's a workhorse of a boat.

[AKDoug]

Very similar techniques - the Tolmans are total Alaska cult boats, for anyone not into boats or from Alaska.

There's structural design differences between a Tolman and what I am doing but they're pretty technical. If I had to describe the difference without getting into absurd detail I'd say the Tolmans are like a traditional body on frame vehicle and I'm building a unibody. But they're very similar. The Tolmans are proven, great performers. The designer was putting the early Tolmans together around the time that Jacques Mertens was designing his first commercial plans in this material. The revised ones like the Widebody and Jumbo were influenced by the Mertens C19, I believe. The hulls are almost identical, they only differ in the specifics of the construction, which on the Tolman is more a hull on a frame than a stressed skin. But their performance is nearly indistinguishable from each other, there's basically no practical difference.

If you built a Tolman upside down, used no fasteners, lighter plywood but heavier, biaxial laminates and lighter stringers, pulling the strength from the biax... they'd be the same exact boat, the Tolman and the original Mertens. It's a workhorse of a boat.

I have a set of plans for a Great Alaskan, which uses the Tolman style of construction, but has a bit better architecture for riding smooth. Unfortunately, the dream hasn't come to fruition because I realize to build something that big I was going to have to build a building due to my climate. Spending a $100K on a building for a $70K boat build just wasn't in the cards. There's a great story of Renn taking a swing with an axe at the bottom of Tollman skiff he had in the shop upside down and an aluminum boat, also upside down in the shop. A customer questioned the strength of a plywood/epoxy boat to the an aluminum boat. The axe did damage to the plywood/epoxy boat for sure, but it flat out poked a hole in the aluminum boat.

Thanks for the explanation of the differences in the designs.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Yeah, I have the same set of plans; I think they're a bargain as boat plans go, actually. But I definitely read you on the space needed to build one of those things, that's nothing to sneeze at.





Photos in this stage are pretty dull, it's just fairing and sanding.

I have been really busy taking down a couple of big trees and processing the resulting wood, so I only had a few hours to work on the boat this weekend. But at least the tree issues are finished and I got them down without sending a major limb into my neighbour's kitchen, which was what I always worried about in every windstorm. There was a big cherry tree that was old and beginning to rot from the inside, that was the one I worried about most. It was pretty fiddly to section down each piece in a controlled fall but I have a big forested property and do that stuff pretty regularly so I have the gear. Anyway that's dealt with and the wood is now curing for next year.





There's not really much to show, just incrementally smoother, more fair surfaces.





I'm down to spot-fixing stuff, but there were still big spots to fix. This round should get it down to details, I hope. The join of the hull to the stem still needs a bit of work. There are a few little areas that might need more filler but it's rapidly approaching the minor applications of Quickfair stage.

The only other bit of news is that I picked up some Pettit epoxy primer. I plan to use it as the very last product before going to topcoat. Before it goes on I'll probably roller on some cheap primer, figuring that it'll get sanded right back off for the first couple of rounds. But I'm thinking the Pettit Protect will seal everything up nice and tight before the topcoat.

I also plan to flip it before painting the hull, since it's a relatively small boat and I can flip it back to paint if I want. The epoxy primer should make for a pretty durable finish during the interior construction phase. Won't be long and I'll be building a cradle to flip her on to.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Little snowy this week, and harder to keep the garage warm enough to work with epoxy, but I'm doing what I can.

Drinks are nice and cold, at least, with a walk-out refrigerator:



Fairing is coming along; there are a couple of spots with notations like this:





But mostly it's just fine-tuning areas around fiberglass overlaps. I am overdoing it for a boat that'll be used hard, but that's just how I do stuff.

I found a nice tool for shaping the inside radius of the hull-stem fillet:





And other than that it's just spot-fixing minor stuff with fairing mix.









Oh, and more coats of epoxy on the rubrails etc.









Couple of spots at the bow still need a bit of tuning, but it's very close to primer stage. If it weren't below freezing all the time, it'd already be primed. But the epoxy is curing very slowly, so it's hard to sand. Lots of waiting, which I am not very good at.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Like everyone I find fairing to be a monotonous process; unlike some people I can't seem to stop at "good enough" which is dumb since this is basically a work boat for me. But I keep finding very minor flaws that I want to sort out, and then it's cold so I have to wait a couple of days to sand, and it just drags on.

Anyway I'm just about at the point where I'll be putting on primer. For the first round I'll probably just hit it with Kilz, since it sands easily and builds quickly and it's cheap. And I'll probably sand 95% of it right back off, anyway. But I think it'll be next weekend before I actually get paint on the boat.

Difficult to make fairing pictures interesting but anyway here's what you get:









If I didn't want to put a nice high gloss finish on her at then end I could have primered here back around Christmas, which is a bit ridiculous when you think about it. Six weeks to build, two months to get her ready for primer.

Oh here's another thing that at least has some faint trace of interest: someone mentioned to me early on that I should have lots of light in the shop. I forgot I had these lights, a friend grabbed them for me out of a lot of stuff that got auctioned off for peanuts after some movie set closed down:



They give a pretty natural colour temperature and they're plenty bright. Those are rare earth magnets on the back. They hold really well to anything ferrous, even sheet metal. Here's one I stuck to a machete I happened to have handy. I had to yank it off, it really stuck.



So those are kind of handy and have 25' cables, much better than any halogen work lamp I have. Total cost: I helped the guy move some stuff one time. Actually in exchange for that he helped me haul my last boat out of my apartment so if anything, I owe him.

[AKDoug]

I used Kilz II water based on my epoxy coated plywood project and it worked fantastic. I haven't tried old school Kilz.