My first boat[PIC heavy].

[NCO]

I currently study to become a boat builder, specializing in wooden boats made by traditional techniques. The first practice work at school is getting there nicely, so I thought to share with you few of the pictures I have taken along the way.

The boat is actually being built from plywood as it is my first and high quality boat wood costs a small fortune. The school wouldn't want us to screw up hundreds of euros worth of good materials. We study by doing which is one thing I really love about the school. Of course, plywood is no where near as nice to work with as good boat wood is, but it is cheap and will do the job of teaching us the basics of small boat construction.

I will be updating this thread as we make more progress so that you will see the different stages of the construction. At the moment we are on Christmas holiday and will return to work at 3rd of January.

The boat we build is a 6.5m, six oar, three rower competition boat. It ought to be finished well before midsummer 2011.

Here on the first picture we have the first pair(of planks) attached to the keel. The frames are there to guide the angles of the planks to go as desired. After the boards are done the frames will be removed and the ash(Fraxinus Excelsior) ribs will be installed.
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Riveting on the 2nd pair.
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Here we have both 1st and 2nd pair on and the 3rd pair in progress. The first two pairs were made from 9mm plywood and the rest will be made from 6.5mm plywood to cut down excess weight. This is a competition boat after all. All the planking is riveted by hand with copper rivets. We use Sikaflex-291 in between the seams.
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Here's where we are now. Fourth pair on, last pair to go. We'll be building this one with five pairs of planks.
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The stern from inside.
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Towards the bow.
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[Justin Case]

Looking Good there Noah !

[NCO]

When you can fit a pair of elephants on that, give me a call, I'll hire you once I have my own boat building business... lol.

[BENESSE]

That is really amazing, NCO! (what are the dimensions...21' long?)
I look forward to watching your progress. Can't wait to see it on water.

[Justin Case]

When you can fit a pair of elephants on that, give me a call, I'll hire you once I have my own boat building business... lol.

lol,, ok

[canid]

a lot of people substitute decent grade exterior plywood for marine plywood, and to acceptable result. i don't know how you grade plywood, or if the grading system we use here is international, but AAX or ABX are free from defects on one side, and either free from defects, or free from any but minor defects on the other, with an acceptable core.

i can't testify to that personally as i haven't done this yet, but i've seen a lot of boats using it.

will you be caulking the planks or glassing the hull?

That is looking like a fine boat; Thank you for sharing. Best of luck to you.

[NCO]

Going metric again, sorry. 6.5m long, 1.5m wide... cant remember the height by heart.

The 9mm plywood is marine grade spruce plywood and the 6.5mm is outdoor grade birch plywood. ABX I think. I get lost in translation with technical terminology...

For making it watertight we use the sikaflex. First spread a layer of it on the lower plank to the seam area. Then attach the next plank on it. I hope thats what you asked, canid. No glassing of this boat.

[canid]

That is just what i was wondering, thank you. It sounds like just the ticket as long as you've got a little bit of headspace between planks. I don't think plywood moves nearly as much as board planking with moisture though, so I bet it's a minor concern.

It's my understanding that marine plywood uses the same glue as outdoor. As I understand it, ABX means that the good face is grade 'A' (supposed to be free from imperfections), which the opposite face is grade 'B', allowed to have only minor imperfections and the core inside is 'X', meaning that they used whatever was handy, since it's a lot less important to integrity and doesn't have to be pretty.

My knowledge of boat-building is mostly academic, so anybody with real experience could straighten me out if I'm off about anything.

I hope you keep us updated as it comes along. It's a beautiful boat so far.

[canid]

All my dreams lately have been filled with images like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvkWjQYzuCM

[crashdive123]

Cool project NCO. Looking forward to your prgress. How many students are working on it - or does each student build their own?

[NCO]

Canid, on the video, i know the feeling. one day on a boat i build with my own hands...

Crash: two, me and one other. There is 10 students studying boat building. Rest 30 of our unit study carpentry. There is three boats and a canoe being made, and two students are at a local boat factory for fibreglass training.

[hunter63]

Very cool.
I like the old ways of doing things, kinda like following in your ancestors foot steps.

[canid]

or oar-strokes.

i'm watching the documentary on this right now: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/vikingvoyage/

it's inspirational.

[Camp10]

Thats a great project! Nice work, I cant wait to see it finished as well.

[rebel]

From what I've read that's a great boat.

[huntermj]

I've built a couple of small stitch and glue boats. Its the sanding that will drive a man mad.
The difference between marine grade and outdoor grade plywood is marine grade plywood will be free of voids in the inner layers, a void can cause a structural weakness.
Nice work NCO.

[canid]

i think it was a youtube video i watched where the builder said he spent about 500 hours on a boat, of which 450 was spent sanding and 30 spent looking for his pencil

[Rick]

Wow! I am genuinely impressed. You should be rightfully proud of that! I'm having some trouble visualizing what you are riveting to. Is there an overlap in the plank that ties row 1 and 2 together (for example)?

[klickitat]

very inspiring.

[Rick]

My cousin had a boat he dubbed the Leakin' Leana. When he took it out he carried a coffee can of gasoline and some roofing tar. He'd mix some tar with the gas and fashion a plug to jab in the holes to keep it from sinking. He did about as much pluggin' as he did fishin'.