Category: Boatbuilders and restorers

Professional and amateur boat builders and restorers

Follow the duck – plans and boatbuilders’ stories at Duckworks magazine

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Duckworks - the best site for home-built boating enthusiasts

Duckworks Magazine’s monthly bulletin linked to an intheboatshed.net reference to Joe Dobler yesterday, and I’d like to repay the compliment.

For years now, Duckworks Magazine editor Chuck Leinweber has maintained a steady stream of fascinating posts about boats and boating, mainly concerning small boats and in particular home-built boats and occasionally restored older craft.

What makes it stand out is that it’s a real miscellany, and that it’s made up of so many obviously genuine stories about real people. Some of the material is inspirational stuff about building and cruising small boats, but you can also find tutorials on how to perform particular tasks and dire warnings about how to avoid repeating someone’s mistake.

If you’re inspired to get into building small boats, I think it’s essential reading – as is Duckworksmagazine’s sister site Duckworks Boat Builders Supply. A good place to start might be the Duckworks BBS plans page.

Duckworksmagazine: http://www.duckworksmagazine.com

Duckworks Boat Builder’s Supply http://www.duckworksbbs.com/

A new boat along long-forgotten plank-on-edge racing sailing yacht lines

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Molly - a new boat built along long-forgotten plank-on-edge racing sailing yacht lines

Molly - a new boat built along long-forgotten plank-on-edge racing sailing yacht lines Molly - a new boat built along long-forgotten plank-on-edge racing sailing yacht lines

Tiny 1880s-style plank-on-edge dayboat Molly at the Beale Park Boat Show

One of the more amazing sights at the Beale Park Boat Show was Molly, an extraordinary toy-like plank-on-edge dayboat being built by boatbuilder Peter Graham.

At the time, I thought that seeing a boat like this would be a once-in-a-lifetime event as few people would build boats like this, and I’ve been saving it for a rainy day as a treat for intheboatshed.net readers when there wasn’t much else going on.

But a doubly amazing thing has happened – an enquiry from a boatbuilder in the US who says he is building a boat to the same lines, and has asked for contact details for Peter after seeing the boat in a magazine. Of course, as I had photos to share I was happy to help. So now we know that two of these amazing little boats are being built.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about the enquiry is that it seems to have come from the US – a land where in the 1870s and 80s racing yachts were so shallow and beamy they were nicknamed ‘soap dishes’ while the British were busy building to ‘plank-on-edge’ or ‘leadmine’ lines. The two styles of yacht regularly fought it out until a kind of compromise between the two extreme hull types eventually won out.

But compromises can have a dull quality, and it’s the lack of compromise that makes a boat like this exciting, at least to me. I urgently need to know how this boat sails – I hope she sails as well as she looks, for when I saw her it was clear Peter had done an outstanding job.

After I put this post up, Peter got in touch with two more images, one of Molly, and another of the sailplan from the plans he’s working to:

Molly - a new boat built along long-forgotten plank-on-edge racing sailing yacht lines Molly - a new boat built along long-forgotten plank-on-edge racing sailing yacht lines

Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007

Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007 Wolstenholme Mallard Jackson’s Cracker

Adam Claridge’s Wolstenholme Mallard

Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007 Oughtred Mole Talpa Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007 Chris Partridge Wolstenholme Sprite Snarleyow Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007 Phil Oxborrow Selway Fisher Prospector Tonawanda

Graham Davies’ Oughtred Mole Talpa; Chris Partridge’s Wolstenholme Sprite Snarleyow; Phil Oxborrow’s Selway-Fisher Prospector Tonawanda

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Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007 Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007 Richard Rooth Oughtred Elf Inwe Home Built Boat Regatta meeting 2007 Hen Party

A general messabout-style beach photo; Richard Rooth’s Oughtred Elf Inwe; canoe Hen Party

Chris Perkins, the Watercraft award-winning builder of Scotch Mist, an award-winning Iain Oughtred Macgregor sailing canoe, has kindly sent me these photos of this year’s Home Built Boat Rally national meet at the Cotswold Water Park near Cirencester. It’s great to see a British version of the American messabout movement emerging, and perhaps we’ll see some more home boatbuilding in the UK as a result.

There’s an earlier post about the HBBR here: http://intheboatshed.net/…1st-and-2nd-september/

HBBR have a Yahoogroup at http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/uk-hbbr and a website at http://www.uk-hbbr.co.uk/uk .

Amazon has just a few of Iain Oughtred’s classic paperback on plywood clinker building: Iain Oughtred plywood boatbuilding book