Aug
12
Posted under
Wooden Boat Building
The development of Wooden Boat Building techniques led to the opening up of the world as never before. Whilst boats made of materials such as bark and reeds or animal hides stretched over lightweight frames, had been used since prehistoric times, it was not until mankind learnt to use timber, in a form other than the simple hollowed out log; that travel by water became more than a local excursion.
Much experimentation over many centuries, with materials and methods of both construction and propulsion, led to wooden boats growing in size to become mighty ships, this led to world wide systematic exploration, which was followed by trade and conquest. By the time wooden boats and ships were replaced by the modern examples constructed of iron and steel; or aluminium or fibreglass the whole world had been discovered, mapped and irretrievably linked together.
The crowning glory of the wooden boat age was the “Great Republic” the largest commercial wooden sailing vessel ever built. The three and four masted super sailors; “clipper” ships like the cutty sark; which plied the seas transporting tea and wool and grain, were mostly composite vessels made of timber over steel frames and can’t really be called wooden boats. Their reign over the seas lasted but a few years before they too were gone and with them the many of the traditional wooden boat building skills.
Today wooden boat building exists mainly in a few traditional areas still building small fishing or transportation vessels (mostly in third world countries) and to the world of pleasure boating. Sail and motor boats of all sizes, as well as dingys, dorys and other forms are still being constructed by craftsmen and a now growing band of enthusiasts.
Wooden Boat Building associations and clubs are springing up all over the world and schools dedicated to teaching what were mainly traditionally handed down crafts are found throughout England Europe and North America. Dedicated volunteers are signing on to restoration or replica projects and more and more individuals are committing themselves to building wooden boats.
There is nothing more satisfying than seeing the finished product, of sometimes months or even years of work, reach fruition by firstly surviving its launching and then proving itself seaworthy.
What are you going to do this winter, watch reruns on TV, worry about the midriff bulge or get out into your garage or workshop and get to work building a beautiful wooden boat. Then when spring arrives you can look forward to spending some time on the water, fishing, sailing, motoring about; whatever the project you undertake seeing it come to fruition will be a wonderful reward for some fulfilling winter work.
Timber is just the most wonderful material to work with it is buoyant, cheap, widely available and easily worked and the satisfaction of creating something from a natural traditional living material cannot exaggerated; even if the method and tools you may chose to use are modern, just working with wood takes you back to much simpler times when skill and craftsmanship were greatly admired. Wooden Boat Building plans and step by step instuctions are readily available, what are you waiting for, get started.
Technorati Tags: Wooden Boat Building
Aug
11
Posted under
Wooden Boat Building
Pete Culler on Wooden Boats
If you are interested in Wooden Boats and Wooden Boat Building
there is one book you should have and this is it.
Renowned as one of the last and best of the old-time boatbuilders
Pete will inspire, inform and entertain you.
.
His designs are classic melds of elegance and utility; his workmanship was akin to artistry; and his teaching and writing a blend of clarity, good sense, insight, and humor.
This book brings together the complete texts of Culler’s classic works Boats, Oars, and Rowing and Skiffs Catalogs and a selection of his timeless boat designs.
You will never regret buying this treasure of a book.
Technorati Tags: wooden boat, Wooden Boat Building
Aug
08
Posted under
Wooden Boat Building
I created this video for the Lake Union Virtual Museum, at lakeunionhistory.org. Dick Wagner of Seattle’s Center for Wooden Boats tells about the decades when Lake Union was ringed with shops building fine wooden boats.
Duration : 0:2:55
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Technorati Tags: Center for Wooden Boats, Dick Wagner, Lake Union history, Wooden Boat Building
Jun
18
Posted under
wooden boat plans
http://www.clientcatalog.com/plant-boat – Wooden Boats Plans
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http://www.clientcatalog.com/plant-boat – Wooden Boat Building
Duration : 0:0:59
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Technorati Tags: aluminum, aluminum boat, boat, Boat Building, bottom, building, catamaran, catamaran boat, designs, dinghy, Dory, Dory Boat, drift, drift boat, duck boat, fishing boat plans, flat, flat bottom boat, houseboat, hydroplane, hydroplane boat, plans, plywood boat plans, pontoon, pontoon boat kits, power boat, rowboat, sailboat, small sailboat, trawler, trawler plans, wood boat kits, wooden boat, Wooden Boat Building, wooden row boat, wooden-boat-designs
May
19
Posted under
wooden boat plans
http://tr.im/S8pr Finally – You can start turning your dream of building a boat into a reality…
Duration : 0:6:4
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Technorati Tags: boat building plans, boat designs plans, boat plan, Boat Plans, boat plans wooden, boats plans, Build Your Own Boat, building a boat, classic-boat-plans, dinghy plans, dory boat plans, fishing boat plans, houseboat plans, jon-boat-plans, model-boat-plans, plywood boat plans, sailboat plans, small boat plans, wood boat plans, Wooden Boat Building, wooden boat plan, wooden boat plans
Sep
13
Posted under
Wooden Boat Building
Methods of Wooden Boat Building
For a Wooden Boat to be successful it needs to be built of timbers joined in such a way that they provided a hollow interior with a water proof outside shell. Either the method of joining the timbers and/or an internal framework must provide structural integrity. The structural integrity must be able to resist both static forces (i.e. the boat must be self supporting both longitudinally and in cross section when at rest) and also must be able to resist the enormous dynamic forces of wave and wind on the hull, superstructure and any rigging.
The following methods of Wooden Boat Building use differing techniques and hull designs to achieve the desired results.
Clinker or Lap Strake Built Boats.
The Clinker or Lap Strake built boat is the type of construction used most beautifully by the Vikings when building their longships. It is an excellent lightweight method of boat building, a method which is most often used today in dinghies and small craft.
In this method the boat is built from longitudinal planks with the bottom edge of one plank overlapping the top edge of the one below. The planks are joined at the overlap with rivets, clenched nails or glue. The overlapping of the planks provides for excellent stiffness and means that internal framing can be kept to a minimum, which creates a light sturdy boat. The method often allows for the hull to be built first and the strengthening internal frame to be fitted afterwards.
Modern Plywood construction of clinker or lap strake hulls often uses resilient, flexible, easily worked marine grade plywood with epoxy being used to bond the planks. The epoxy provides bonding, filling and protection all at once, allowing the speedy building of a vessel which has the beauty and strength of wood and a superb low maintenance finish.
It was not unusual for older clinker boats built of natural timber to need “soaking” in order for the timber joints to swell and so become water tight. This has been eliminated with the use of modern epoxy bonding.
As the size of a Lap Strake boat increases, the thickness of the planking required and the size and weight of the internal bracing grows to an extent that the Carvel Built boat provides a far more efficient use of timber and better structural integrity.
Carvel Built Boats
A Carvel built boat is one in which the internal structural frame of the boat is created first and then the planking is attached. The planking consists of longitudinal timbers which are fitted and attached to the preformed timber frame. They are joined edge to edge, with no overlap (butt joined). The joint between the planks is sealed by caulking or by a specially designed timber fillet inserted in a groove in the edge of the planks.
This is the method which was and still is the most common form of building larger wooden boats and commercial ships. The frame of the boat and timbers required for construction can become quite massive as the size of the vessel increases.
Plywood on Frame
The introduction of Waterproof plywood has seen the development of “ply on frame” and then later even “frameless plywood” boats being designed and successfully produced. These methods are ideally suited to the amateur or novice builder because they allow for a quick and relatively easy build taking full advantage of modern cheap power tools.
The frame of the boat may be constructed of timbers or may be cut out of plywood sheets, which provides a form of internal bulkhead. The use modern epoxy glues which give waterproof joins which are often much stronger than the timber itself also speeds the building process.
Stitched Plywood
The stich and glue building method where the plywood joints are held together by either wire or plastic ties and the joint is covered with fibreglass and epoxy is a popular modern building method. This has lead to the design of plywood boats which are frameless, relying on the integrity of the bonded hull to provide structural strength. This means an extremely lightweight hull can be designed.
Cold Moulding
Cold moulding is another modern method taking advantage of the superb characteristics of modern epoxy bonding materials. In this techniques a minimum of two layers of thin strips of timber (usually plywood or veneer are laminated on top of each other. The layers run in different directions, usually in a diagonal pattern. Often insulation is bonded between two outer layers and an additional inner layer. This method requires a preformed mould on which to build the boat and this extra work usually precludes the amateur builder. The method does however produce beautifully lightweight hulls which are very strong. Often vacuum forming is used to provide an extra fine finish and ensure the close bonding of the timbers.
Technorati Tags: Boat Building, Wooden Boat Building, Wooden Boats
Sep
06
Posted under
Build Your Own Boat,
Wooden Boat Building
Why wood? Wooden Boat Building may seem old fashioned with a choice of modern materials such as Aluminum or Steel or Glass Fiber reinforced Polyester Resin (fiberglass) but; as a material for building boats and small ships; wood has a number of significant advantages over the other alternatives.
The first is the fact that wood has the highest Quality Coefficient for boat building. What does that mean? It means that for a given size a properly built wooden boat will be the strongest for any given weight. When comes to resisting the stress place on hulls by the pounding of waves and water, tests have shown that wood is nearly twice as resistant to these stress’s as the other materials.
Wood also has the best thermal and acoustic properties of any boat building material. You don’t find condensation running down the inside of your wooden boat nor do you have to listen to drumming caused by the slap of waves on the hull.
Wood also has no galvanic corrosion problems.
And of course nothing is as pleasing to the eye as beautifully finished timber; notice that the best builders in all the other materials still use timber in their interior fit-outs.
Given that wood is also buoyant, relatively cheap, and widely available and easily worked and is particularly suited for small boats (up to about 6 meters in length) it is no wonder that Wooden Boat Building is especially popular with amateur builders. Timber can be worked with the simplest of tools; most of the work can be done with only cheap hand tools. The natural bending characteristics of wood mean that pleasing smooth, symmetrical lines can obtained without special moulds or bending equipment.
Other natural characteristics of wood such as its durability and resilience make it ideal for boatbuilding. If properly maintained and protected from the elements and marine or freshwater organisms a wooden boat will last a lifetime.
The question might be asked if wood is so good a boat building material why are there so many fiber-glass and aluminum boats around. The answer probably comes down to the ability to mass produce such boats. When the cost of labor is taken into account a wooden boat can be much more expensive. An aluminum or even steel boat can be made quickly out of stamped or prefabricated sections assembled on a jig and welded together and a fiberglass boat is built in a mould with a combination of woven and chopped glass-fibre being encased in plastic like resin.
That is not to say that these techniques and materials are inferior for boat building (the vast majority of new boats are built from one of these materials and cost alone is not the only reason) but they are more suited to production line methods than to one off efforts.For the amateur builder the cost of specially made moulds (for fiber-glass) and welding equipment, special templates or jigs and specialist skill (aluminum welding) quickly push the advantage towards wood as the building material of choice for the one off home builder.
You can join the many thousands of people engaged in Wooden Boat Building, taking advantage of the ready availability of wood in most parts of the world.
Next time I’ll explore some of the many different methods of Wooden Boat Building.
Technorati Tags: boat builders, Boat Building, wood boat building, wooden boat, Wooden Boat Building
Sep
04
Posted under
Wooden Boat Building,
Wooden Boat Building Involvement
Wooden Boat Building involving a wooden ski boat restoration.
My third experience in Wooden Boat Building was being involved in the restoration of work on some friends 1950’s inboard powered wooden ski-boat.
When I was about 17 years old the family of some very close friends, purchase a second hand wooden ski-boat and so began what was a long term involvement with the maintenance and “restoration” of this wooden boat. Read the rest of this entry »
Technorati Tags: Wooden Boat Building
Sep
03
Posted under
Build Your Own Boat,
Wooden Boat Building
Some Wooden Boat Building ventures begun by people who started their project with little or no conception of what they were undertaking; and who through sheer determination and bull headedness managed to finish; do end up producing a work of art, but more often the venture ends in tears and frustration.
So I advise that very careful reflective consideration before you begin is a must. Read the rest of this entry »
Technorati Tags: Build Your Own Boat, wood boat, wood boat building, Wooden Boat Building
