Category: Boating, boats, ships and the sea

Build dinghies and learn boatbuilding with Stirling & Son

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Details of Dinghy Building

11' pilot's punt Keel Hog ad Stern Assembly of 11' Boat Dinghy Building Course

9' Backbone Assembly

9ft dinghy; 11ft pilot punt; keel, hog and stern assembly of pilot punt; dinghy building course in full swing; dinghy backbone assembly

Will Stirling has written to say that the plans he’s been drawing up for a traditional general purpose 9ft clinker-built dinghy and an 11ft pilot punt of circa 1900 are now are ready for sale to the boatbuilding public, and has kindly attached a few photos.

Each set of plans comprises two sheets of A2 tracing paper, two sheets of A1 tracing paper, a scantlings list, a list of materials and a CD with photographs of various stages and details of how the boats are built. The A2 sheets contain the lines draught and consrtuctional detail, while the A1 sheets include templates of the moulds and transom with the planking marked out and templates of the backbone memmbers (stem, sternpost, stern knee etc). The plans are priced at £50 each. In the near future, further plans in the same format will be available for a 17ft salmon fishing boat that Will is currently building.

Plans without templates are available for a 21ft frigate’s longboat of 1757, a 37ft smuggling lugger of 1835 and a 43ft gentleman’s cutter of 1880.

Stirling & Son are also now running dinghy building courses in which each student builds their own 9ft dinghy – and the the next course is starts on Monday 1st February 2010 and will run three days a week for 17 weeks, finishing on the 26 May. The cost of the course per student is £3,350 including materials, and I gather there is still one place available!

For more intheboatshed.net posts relating to Will Stirling and Stirling & Son, click here.

Contact Stirling & Son on tel 01822 614 259 or via the website at http://www.stirlingandson.co.uk .

The Vietnamese Mouse makes more progress

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const 28 nov 09 010 const 26 nov 09 007

Jacques Molinari’s TheEdge Mouseboat is looking very smart

The carvel-built Mouseboat built to the free TheEdge plans that Jacques Molinari is building in Vietnam continues to make progress. He’s now reached the point where he’s making sails and launch day is approaching.

I’ve recentlyseen some film of a plywood-built boat to the same plans sailing, and I have to say it seems to perform pretty well. Good luck, take care and remember this is really a pond skimmer Jacques!

Sign this petition – stop the Government selling off our inland waterways

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Oxford_Canal_at_Hillmorton

The Oxford Canal at Hillmorton on the eastern edge of Rugby in Warwickshire –
image from the Wikipedia, photographed by G-Man

Ordinary people in the UK are already prevented from using the large majority of our rivers, streams and lakes. And now there’s apparently a threat of the canal system being sold to private owners which will likely mean we’ll have even less access, for unlike many states in Europe and the Americas, ours is a small, crowded country where privately owned also means ‘Keep Out!’.

Needless to say, this must not happen and a new petition on the Prime Minister’s website has given us an important opportunity to show the level of support that exists for our wonderful canal system.

I think this is an important petition – please help protect and extend our inland waters for public use. So please sign here!

PS Read what the British Marine Federation has to say on the subject!