I built the Quick Canoe in a day and a half. This is way slower than some of my customers.
It is the first time I have been disappointed building a complete boat this quick.
The risk of high expectations!
But a day and a half with the problems I had is pretty good.
Melanie in the UK wrote to me. She has just bought an old Mirror dinghy and started sailing for the first time.
Problem is that the boat leaks and she doesn’t want to stop using the boat until the end of the season.
I have a philosophy of keeping older boats on the water and not pulling them off for months on end until you have the time to do the job.
So the article here is useful to see what can be done with an old leaky plywood sailing dinghy to keep it going.
It is perfect sailing weather at the moment in the UK and it is better she is out there learning but with the worst of the leaks gone.
With a disciplined approach she should be able to get all of this done in a week or so. The general leaks fixed permanently and the rotted area reinforced so that the boat won’t break.
This is the second of my talks in the USA. It focuses a bit more on construction and some of the methods that can be used to keep a boat light and simple, but very strong and stiff.
It also discusses how there is a “creep” in boatbuilding and design that increases the weight of boats way over what is really needed for a strong structure.
It is the first boat he has built and Alex is not necessarily taking the quickest way. But he is reporting daily about his building and his ruminations on different subjects. It is a very popular boatbuilding item on the OZ woodwork forum. There have been around 13000 views of his thread already and it read more →
It is a bit hard finding information on my forum as the list is not very ordered, so I have attempted to fix this.There is a general building section then each boat is in alphabetical order.To see all the images you may need to become a member, however, they are a good bunch and will read more →
At the Duckflat Autumn Boating School Bob Bauze built himself a Eureka Canoe. We used a few methods a bit different from the plan to speed things up and make some fitting work a bit easier. We used fillets on the inside of the boat instead of glass tape. This method adds a bit more read more →
The first part was up last week. This week we talk about traditional vs modern sailtypes – everyone knows I am a fan of trad rigs because of their low cost – but here I go into the influences on the other side. I love the efficiency of modern rigs so I use all the read more → INDEX FOR THIS MONSTER EUREKA CANOE THREAD – MILESTONESEven more info at Peter Hyndman’s Eureka Pages Marking out the plywood and cutting Joining up the Prefabricated panels and starting stitching Filleting on the inside of the Eureka Canoethe tidy way Marking out the canoe bulkheads Getting ready to put the decks in place – I read more → Furled Sails – They call themselves the “World’s First Sailing Podcast” based in North America. Anyway, last week Christy and Noel called me up chatted to me for a couple of hours. So they have an interview with me on their site followed by a part 2 next week. This looks like the permanent linkhttp://www.furledsails.com/article.php3?article=760 read more →
Gluing Endgrain Gluing timber end grain with epoxySee drawing of endgrain right.. The basic problem is that end grain is highly absorbent so it can steal the resin from the join leaving insufficient for good bonding. The trick … is to feed the end grain some mixed resin before the glue mix is put on read more → There are huge advantages in keeping the epoxy at a slightly raised temperature. * It flows out better onto the work * It mixes easier * The curing kicks off faster in cold weather (and the box can easily only be turned on when needed. There are huge advantages in keeping the epoxy at a read more →
There was the suggestion that very coarse sandpaper was the best to use on a timber surface to ensure good bonding when gluing or fiberglassing the surface. This is not recommended – the following explains why. There was the suggestion that very coarse sandpaper was the best to use on a timber surface to ensure read more → There are two tricks to sikaflexing between strips. Use the Sika Primer – it improves the bond strength to the timber for a permanent job. You can get away without it often, but it changes the situation from a fairly strong bond to a hugely strong bond (you’ll know this if you have ever removed read more →
Most people know about using Cordless Drills to drive screws into timber now, but I remember when it was new and exciting! Here’s my spiel from my plans sets Cordless Battery Drill with Clutch. A marriage made in heaven. The drill can be battery (most convenient) or mains powered. It is best if it has read more →
The two methods here save a lot of mess when building boats with epoxy. They also allow accurate and fast placement of mixed epoxy glue. Most supermarkets have varieties of “snap lock” bags. They have a seal across the opening of the bag that can be pressed together with finger pressure. They make it a read more →
One of the great leaps forward available to us when using epoxy is being able to eliminate fastenings (screws,nails, bolts etc) from the structure. Many builders now only use fasteners to temporarily hold things together while the glue sets up.The temporary fasteners are removed and can be re-used many times. Eliminating fastenings also speeds up read more →
During the recent Duck Flat Spring School (I was one of the instructors) a GIS was built by Paul and Chris – who are a pair of old school chums who have a long term plan of building something bigger to share the use of. During the class they built the hull, glued up the read more →
I have just finished additional drawings for a lug rig version of the OZ PDRacer. Properly designed and engineered spars and sail. I would like to think I am something of an expert on lug rigs ritted to small boats. I have sailed countless hours with such rigs including weekly club races against conventional boats read more →
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