Wooden Boat Project

Background

This wooden boat was actually the third iteration of a series of small personal-sized boats I attempted to make in order to go fishing on a lake near where I lived back in Indiana. The first was simply an inflatable pool, which worked as a flotation device, and felt like a water bed, but someone pointed out that any hole would result in having to quickly escape from what amounts to a wet blanket. The second iteration was a fairly rudimentary wooden trapezoid made from an old bedframe wood skeleton, with cardboard walls to make up for the weight of the wood. I can already hear you thinking, "how do you keep the water out?" I had the brilliant idea of using a clear shower curtain to wrap around the whole setup as they do fairly well as a water barrier as-is. This worked even worse than the first attempt, and sunk as we were planning to set sail. After dragging it out, I decided it was time to try making a proper wooden boat.

Astute observers may note that the majority of the hull panels were only 1/4 inch plywood! This is absolutely correct as thicker sheets were harder to bend, and this was a time when plywood was unnecessarily expensive. The main floor timbers of the boat are actually old hardwood panels. A win for so called "reclaimed" wood, maybe not so for boat integrity. Worse yet is that I would actually notch a section out of these pieces to fit seating. The plywood panels were held together by 1x1.5 inch strips, overcautiously hand-tightened screws, and maybe glue if I had any sense. The biggest challenges at this step were making sure all the curved pieces came together in a symmetrical and stable way without large gaps. In hindsight, I do not believe I would take this approach again.

In one of the only existing pictures of the finished boat, three important revisions are visible: We can see that 1. Another brace along the side wall was installed on top of the hardwood timbers and attached to the vertical wall supports. 2. Notches were cut out of said floor timbers to make room. 3. Personal floatation devices were added as seats. Waterproofing was achieved with a modified technique based on fiberglassing. Now when most wooden boatmakers create a piece they want to show off and protect, they drape fiberglass sheets over the finished boat and apply a clear resin to create an extra durable waterproof barrier. In lieu of this, I used a canvas painters dropcloth from home depot, and about a gallon or two of Titebond 3, a waterproof wood glue. To give credit where it is due, it worked great and created a very rigid wall along the admittedly thin plywood. This was then cleaned up before painting with waterproof exterior barn and fence paint. Nobody said this would be perfect, and I am proud to say it did better than the previous versions. I made a couple of very simple wooden paddles in anticipation of once again setting sail on a fishing expedition with an engineer friend of mine named William. The boat seats 2 semi-comfortably and I am happy to report we actually caught a couple fish from the boat on the last night of summer before college.