Post by Adam Brown (BGGoosekiller) on Jun 27, 2007 20:14:39 GMT -5
I had a few people ask how it was going so here we go.
Let me preface this by saying, I am not much of a woodworker and I don’t know anything about boat design. I found plans on another forum for this style boat and roughly followed them. I am not done with it yet and hence have not floated it yet. I think this will work fine for flooded fields and maybe even floating down the river. I am uncertain weather I think it will be ideal for true “layout hunting” in open water. Definitely not big or rough water layout though.
Here is a link to the free online plans I found:
cheapsportsman.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.10
I thought the ¼” plywood looked pretty small when I bought wood so I bougth 3/8” for the bottom and sides. I did go back and get ¼” for the top, because of the curves. I think you could probably get by with ¼” everywhere if you really wanted to.
In this picture you can see I’ve cut down the bottom to 36” wide. Attached chines on the inside. Attached the back and put the frame for the cockpit on the front.
I angled the front in a little here. You can see how I attached the chines to the bottom so I would have something to screw the sides into.
I have the sides on and cockpit in here. I have a problem on mine with the cockpit not being up high enough to have a lip on the front side. It is because I made the cockpit a little wider than the plans called for. I am not sure how I would change this on this style boat if I was doing it again. It would probably take a six pack to figure it out.
In this picture I just got done fiberglassing/epoxying the seams on the bottom. More thoughts on fiberglass later. I am not sure that I would do this step again.
I had never done fiberglass before and had a few big air bubbles I didn’’t get worked out for one reason or another. I just used the 4.5” angle grinder to get rid of them once they hardened.
After my fiasco with the air bubbles on the seams I decided to try to fiberglass the bottom first then finish the rest of the boat. I don’t have a good picture to show what happened but it is my biggest blunder of the build so far. I laid the glass out leaving enough on the sides to wrap up around them at a later date. DON’T STOP GLASSING RIGHT AT A CORNER OR EDGE. I stopped right at the sides and the glass hardened enough that when I went to do the sides I could bend it around the edge. If I had stopped 2” back or gone over 2” I would have been ok. I think good glassers would say to put your epoxy on your whole sheet of fiberglass or cut off what you don’t want to epoxy at that time.
Sorry no picture here.
After that problem I just took my dremel and cut the edge of the glass all around the bottom/side edge of the boat. Flipped it over and I was trying to figure out what to do with the interior. I want to waterproof the wood but wasn’t nuts about trying to glass it especially with the chines on the inside. So I sprayed rubberized undercoating in it with the intention of putting a lot of varnish in it when I get done. I finished the undercoating and decided I would put a tread matt of fiberglass down anywhere I could put my weight on the floor.
Here is the glass laid out:
Here it is after I epoxied it.
I was working on cutting the top out tonight but didn’t get very far. (I didn’t have any beer to help me figure out the hard stuff.) I will update this as I get closer to wrapping things up.
Let me preface this by saying, I am not much of a woodworker and I don’t know anything about boat design. I found plans on another forum for this style boat and roughly followed them. I am not done with it yet and hence have not floated it yet. I think this will work fine for flooded fields and maybe even floating down the river. I am uncertain weather I think it will be ideal for true “layout hunting” in open water. Definitely not big or rough water layout though.
Here is a link to the free online plans I found:
cheapsportsman.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.10
I thought the ¼” plywood looked pretty small when I bought wood so I bougth 3/8” for the bottom and sides. I did go back and get ¼” for the top, because of the curves. I think you could probably get by with ¼” everywhere if you really wanted to.
In this picture you can see I’ve cut down the bottom to 36” wide. Attached chines on the inside. Attached the back and put the frame for the cockpit on the front.
I angled the front in a little here. You can see how I attached the chines to the bottom so I would have something to screw the sides into.
I have the sides on and cockpit in here. I have a problem on mine with the cockpit not being up high enough to have a lip on the front side. It is because I made the cockpit a little wider than the plans called for. I am not sure how I would change this on this style boat if I was doing it again. It would probably take a six pack to figure it out.
In this picture I just got done fiberglassing/epoxying the seams on the bottom. More thoughts on fiberglass later. I am not sure that I would do this step again.
I had never done fiberglass before and had a few big air bubbles I didn’’t get worked out for one reason or another. I just used the 4.5” angle grinder to get rid of them once they hardened.
After my fiasco with the air bubbles on the seams I decided to try to fiberglass the bottom first then finish the rest of the boat. I don’t have a good picture to show what happened but it is my biggest blunder of the build so far. I laid the glass out leaving enough on the sides to wrap up around them at a later date. DON’T STOP GLASSING RIGHT AT A CORNER OR EDGE. I stopped right at the sides and the glass hardened enough that when I went to do the sides I could bend it around the edge. If I had stopped 2” back or gone over 2” I would have been ok. I think good glassers would say to put your epoxy on your whole sheet of fiberglass or cut off what you don’t want to epoxy at that time.
Sorry no picture here.
After that problem I just took my dremel and cut the edge of the glass all around the bottom/side edge of the boat. Flipped it over and I was trying to figure out what to do with the interior. I want to waterproof the wood but wasn’t nuts about trying to glass it especially with the chines on the inside. So I sprayed rubberized undercoating in it with the intention of putting a lot of varnish in it when I get done. I finished the undercoating and decided I would put a tread matt of fiberglass down anywhere I could put my weight on the floor.
Here is the glass laid out:
Here it is after I epoxied it.
I was working on cutting the top out tonight but didn’t get very far. (I didn’t have any beer to help me figure out the hard stuff.) I will update this as I get closer to wrapping things up.
