Month: September 2009

Marcus Lewis offers a Lister engine for sale

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Neglected two-cylinder Lister engine going free to anyone who wants it!

Marcus Lewis is starting work on a Percy Mitchell-built tosher at his the workshop at Fowey. An early job has been taking out the old two-cylinder electric start Lister engine, which is now available free to anyone who wants to bring it back to life.

It’ll need some tinkering: Marcus says that it seems seized after lying idle for two or three years, but he doesn’t think it has been submerged. The chains and pawls etc have rusted as the photos show. He can lift engine out of boat and onto someones trailer if necessary.

If you’re interested, contact Marcus via his website at http://www.woodenboatbuilder.co.uk. The tosher itself is shown below if anyone’s interested in owning and caring for a traditional boat built by famous local boatbuilder Percy Mitchell – with luck you may find Marcus is still in search of an owner.

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The first St Ayles skiff, 24 Sept 2009

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St A Skiff 552

St A Skiff 536 St A Skiff 530

The St Ayles skiff at the 25th of September. The chap hamming it up on the thwart is Alec Jordan himself

The first Iain Oughtred-designed St Ayles skiff currently being built in Alec Jordan’s workshop continues to make steady progress as the construction team worker on her interior joinery. For more on the St Ayles skiff and the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project, click here.

Here’s what Chris Perkins, our correspondent on the project, had to say over the weekend:

Not much obvious progress over the last week, attached snaps show the state of play as at last Friday. I think the week has demonstrated the obvious: kitting a clinker ply hull only saves time in skinning the hull, the internal fitting out with all it’s joinery challenges still takes as long as it ever.

Some deep thinking is going on during the fitting out to help make this part of the build as easy as possible for novice builders. We have already partly moved away from Iain’s glorious sweeping taper of the inwale, planing that down on all three laminations has proved very time consuming; the twisted grain in larch hasn’t helped as deep cuts tend to tear out, so fine cuts and very keen plane irons are the order of the day.

Our modification does recognise tradition as study of a traditionally built Fair Isle skiff shows – though I just wish I had taken far more snaps of Aluna Ivy at the Portsoy Festival this year! If only I had known what I would be getting involved with!

The trial of seating positions by Alec was very useful. The cox is going to have to be a pretty short lightweight as there is not a great deal of room in the stern, but we are now comfortable that the spacing of the thwarts is going to work well.

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks Chris! I look forward to hearing more about the project next week.

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Initial drawings for a low-power outboard skiff

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Sketch for intheboatshed

Initial drawings for a 15ft low-power skiff

I’m working on this semi-planing job for a friend. It’s coming out at just over  15ft by 4ft 10in, is intended for a displacement of around 800lbs, and intended for use with a 4-5hp outboard, from which I’m hoping to see 6+ mph.

If you’re interested in the design or have comments, I’d like to hear from you please!

The next stage, as usual, will be a set of drawings for making a model and later a set of free plans for building the boat using the stitch and glue technique. Watch this space…