Build The New Instant Boats

150 Pages·1986·26.477 MB·English

by  H. Payson

BUILD
I NEW
IN STANTBOATS
--------------.--------------
HAROLD "DYNAMITE" PAYSON
I::::!l
WI
INTERNATIONAL MARINE PUBLISHING COMPANY
Camden, Maine
"1984 by International Marine Publishing Company
Third printing, 1986
Typeset by The Key Word, Inc., Belchertown, Massachusetts
Printed and bound by The Alpine Press, Stoughton, Massachusetts
All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, no part of this book may be repro·
duced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission from the publisher.
Published by International Marine Publishing Company
21 Elm Street. Camden, Maine 04843
[phone]
Ubrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Dala
Payson. Harold H.
Build the new instant boats.
Includes index.
I. Boat-building. I. Title.
VM32l.P295 1984 623.8'223 84·81554
ISBN 0-87742·187-0
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments
Xl
PART ONE: BASIC TRAINING 1
1 Opening The Door 3
2 Ways And Means 8
3 A Closer Look At Wood 19
PARTTWO: TACK AND TAPE 27
Introduction 29
4 Building Gypsy The Easy Way 31
5 Building Gypsy Full Size 35
6 Nymph: A 7-Foot 9-Inch Mind Boggier 61
7 Diablo: Speedster And Workhorse 68
PART THREE: NEW BOATS TO JOIN
THE ORIGINAL FLEET 77
Introduction 79
8 The Lug-rigged Windsprint 81
9 Tortoise-The Ugly Duckling 87
10 Ski=er-The Poor Man's Whaler 93
11 The Dynamite Sailboard 98
12 A Workhorse Called June Bug 104
13 The Handy 1Of1-Foot Pointy Skiff 110
14 The Pedal-Driven Sidewheeler 117
15 The 23f1-Foot Light Schooner 124
APPENDIXES:
I Feet, Inches, Eighths 131
II Audel on Quarter Sawing Lumber 131
III My Favorite Luff-Tie System 132
IV Scarfing Plywood 133
V Learning to Sail 134
Glossary 139
Index 144
G
Preface
"Yes, you can," I tell anyone who asks me the question, accommodate a wide range of choices in materials and
"Do you think I can build a boat~" Anyone with a building techniques. Remember your common sense
positive attitude and a smattering of intelligence mixed and let it be your guide. The second goes like thiS: "I'd
with a little common sense can build one of these boats. like to make some design changes-say, widen the
Sure, it will take a few bucks, but not many. Phil Bolger stem and give her sail a different size and shape. What
designs the Instant Boats not only for ease of building do you say?" Don't do it unless you're willing to accept
but for economy as well; each boat is built from 2 x 45 the results for better or worse. When you plunk down
and 4-foot by 8-foot sheets of plywood readily found at your money for a set of plans, you can expect your
any respectable building-supplies store. One-stop choice of boats to perform as advertised, but any
shopping is all you need for most any boat in this fleet, changes you make in hull or rig design will most
and that ain't bad in these days of complexity. assuredlv affect your boat's performance-possibly to
Since the early 19705 when the original fleet of six your liking, but possibly not. Perhaps my argument is
Instant Boats was conceived, many more have been best expressed by the Alcoholic's Prayer, which speaks
added including three "Tack and Tape" boats that are of things that can be changed, the things that cannot,
much more shapely but otherwise very definitely in the and the need for wisdom to know the difference.
Instant Boat mold. Those boats-Gypsy, Nymph, and The last appendix is an introduction to sailing a
Diablo-are in this book, along with eight other small boat, because I know from correspondence that
brothers and sisters for the original Instant Boat fleet. many of you who build the Instant Boats have never
And there will be more. If it's Bolger's, it's new, been sailing before. I remember clearly my own first
different, and it works. Depend on it. awkward attempts, so I'm still qualified to tell you
Before we begin building, let me answer the two about it.
Questions that have been asked most frequently in my Let's build a boat
15 years of selling boat plans. The first is, "I can't get the
wood or fastenings called for by the plans. Can I H.H. "Dynamite" Payson
substitute?" Yes, you can. Instant Boats are designed to September 1984
Ix
Acknowledgments
To Frank O'Brien, whose iUustrative talents grace the cover and pages of this book.
To Bill Prosser for his pan in bringing the book together.
To Jeff Julian for his photographic skills and the use of his photos.
To Editor Jonathan Eaton a special thanks for working with me eyeball to eyeball.
To my three sons, David, Neil, and Timothy, for patiently making endless runs past my camera
while I tried for the best shots of the boats on their trial runs.
To all the enthusiastic readers of my books and articles who have so generously given their
support and encouragement.
PART ONE
Basic Training
1
CHAPTER ONE
Opening The Door
1
Take a few sheets of plywood, cut them to shape from the door to the world of boatbuilding seemed locked.
scaled up, carefully drawn plans, smear on a little glue, Where could I find a key!
drive a couple of handfuls of small nails, stir up a mess I decided my best bet was a reputable independent
of paint, and presto!-you have built an Instant Boat. boatbuilder named Sulo Gronros. He had been building
So I'm oversimplifying-but not all that much. It's a boats when I was a kid, as his father Axel had done
fact that these basic ingredients, put together with a before him, and was still hard at it then and still is
dollop of common sense and a minimum of basic car today.
pentry skills, can put you on the water in a sound and Sulo fired back two short answers: "Get yourself an
handsome craft in surprisingly short order. architect's scale rule, and don't use your own head
The process of getting so much fot so little didn't when you can use somebody else's."
blossom overnight. It evolved from years of listening to These sounded more like riddles than answers. When
would-be boatbuilders who bought plans but never I asked Sulo to elaborate a little on the second part of his
launched even a splinter, and from years of being frus advice, he said only: "Don't waste your time redoing
trated myself, wanting to build small boats but not what's been done before. Start with what you know
knowing where to turn to find out how. already works, and go on from there."
It was my good fortune to live in a fishing, and there· When I checked out the scale rule, I found it a little
fore a boatbuilding, community on the coast of Maine. I frightening. Triangular in cross section, it had a sepa·
could peek over the shoulder of a master builder and rate scale inscribed on each of its six edges. But with a
even ask a few timid questions when I got up the cour little study, I discovered how to read and measure with
age. But watching and doing are two different things, the rule, and that any school kid with an ounce of
and I was a long way from being offered a job in brains could use it to go from inches to feet and back
anyone's boatyard. again. This is often the way with new and challenging
Actually, I wasn't interested in punching someone things: grapple with them, and they cave right in.
else's time clock anyway. My goal was to do my own As for the second hint, I remembered watching my
thing in my own little shop' at home. But at this stage, father·in·law, Archie Rackliff, build round-bottomed,
3
4 BASIC TRAINING
strip-planked boats without benefit of either plans or a ingout utility skiffs with flat, crossplanked bottoms. In
model. Obviously this by-guess-and-by-Cod method the process I began to value the virtues of plywood.
was a hard way to go. Archie had to make a latof adjust
ments as he worked along-shifting his molds this way LIGHTER. .. SIMPLER. .. CHEAPER
and that, taking a little off a mold or adding a little to it
if his planking didn't lie in a fair curve.
But he built the boats he wanted for his own uses, Let's make it clear at the start that cheaper construction
and they worked, SO I foUowed his example. A little luck doesn't have to mean "cheapie" construction.
and a lot of determination helped me flounder my way If you build boats long enough in one locality, the
through two boats, and convinced me that there must chances are that your boats will be adapted to local
be a better way. conditions. For this reason, I tended to build hulls
Then I really took Sulo's words to heart. I made a heavier and stronger than would generally have been
half-model for a boat to my own liking. and with the necessary. This is understandable in view of the rough
help of the scale fule, I took off the lines I needed to conditions and rough usage, not to mention neglect,
build the boat. (A half-model is all you need, since both that Maine coastal fishermen subject their skiffs to. So
halves of a boat are identical, or are supposed to be.) in the beginning my boats had hefty pine sides and
Now I had measurements to go by, not guesses, and the bottoms.
half-model to look at as well. Then pine boards that were wide enough became
The result was a dozen or so plank-an-frame boats hard to find and were too expensive when you could
that looked good and worked well, and a heady feeling find them. Along with other skiff builders, I began cut
of accomplishment In fact, nothing I had ever done ting the sides from plywood sheets. About the same
before matched the satisfaction of staning with an idea time, we all switched to local cedar for tbe bottom
for a boat, creating a model from the idea, building the crossplanking-it was cheaper than pine and every bit
boat full-size, and then putting it to use or selling it. In as good.
those days, I was a full-time lobsterman and only a part A typical result of this approach was a 12-foot skiff I
time boatbuilder. built for my own use, to a design by Sulo's father Axel. I
Still, something was lacking. Although I'd made con built her upside down on a jig. Her sides were plywood
siderable progress beyond the hit-or-miss method, I was and her bottom cedar, but she had an oak shoe running
only doing what had been done by countless genera from stem to stern and another one on each side of that,
tions of boatbuilders before me. I had even done my both to hold her crossplanked bottom together and to
own designing, in a way, but my ambitions didn't lie in provide runners so you could pull her up on a beach.
that direction. I wanted to learn all I could about Her chine logs, stem, and framing were all oak, and she
building. had both inside and outside gunwales, also oak. Heavyr
Let me say right here that I count myself fortunate to I guess she was heavy. But she was still somewhat
have started my boatbuilding career using the seat-of lighter than the old pine-sided model.
the-pants method. Lessons learned the hard way and Now, it makes sense to design and build your boat in
mistakes paid for out of your own pocket Stay with you keeping with the use you're going to make of her. If you
and will always be there for future use when you need are going to paddle around some inland lake or pond,
them. I was doing good, clean work and developing you can get by with very light construction. If you're
skills that have given me considerable satisfaction. going to use her in open water and land in surf on a
But plastic construction materials were coming up rock-strewn beach, that's something else again.
on the boatbuilding horizon, and the demand for my Drag this same crossplanked bottom up and down a
products began to fade. Putting my new skills aside was rocky shore for a few seasons, as I was doing with mine
hard to do, but I had to face it: There was no market for when I was lobstering off the north end of Little
wooden boats that take a month to build when fiber Metinic Island, and you will find that those strengthen
glass boats could be turned out in a day or two. All the ing drag strips very efficiently channel little rocks and
manufacturer had to do was to get his hands on one pebbles between them, making very abrasive rivers that
good hull, then use it as a male plug or a female mold will wear away your bottom.
and reproduce it endlessly in the new material. Soon But if you use a sheet of plywood for this bottom, you
they were selling these modern wonders at filling can cut the drag strips down to no more than absolutely
stations-for a while, anyway, until the mass market necessary for stiffness, and although the bottom will
was glutted. still wear, it will wear evenly.
With deep regret I gave up the building of round So you see, less can be more. Rightly used, lighter
bottomed custom wooden boats and went to work turn- and cheaper can even be stronger, as I was soon to