Category: Traditional clinker

Clinker plans and boatbuilding

Nick Smith makes still more progress on the motor launch Lisa

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

Lisa’s getting nearer and nearer – but she still some way from being finished

Hampshire traditional boatbuilder Nick Smith has kindly sent some more photos of Lisa, the 17ft motor launch he’s currently building. At first glance she might look as if she’s close to completion – but, as he explains, there’s still a fair way to go.

He writes:

‘Hi Gav:

‘Here are some more photos showing progress on ‘Lisa’.

‘The next tasks are to build the sole boards, engine box and battery box, fit fuel pipeage. engine control lever and cables, exhaust hose, bronze manual bilge pump and electric float pump, fit crutch sockets, fairleads, foredeck cleat, towing cleats, ensign socket and pole, bilge rails, seven coats of varnish, bilge paint and a traditional red antifouling. We used to call antifouling ‘compo’ when I was an apprentice, which was short for ‘composition’ – a paint antifouling people used that was based on arsenic!!!!

‘Yes , thats all! Won’t take five minutes. More next week!

‘Regards Nick’

Thanks fella – I’ve no doubt the owner will be very proud. A trivial point that comes to mind from these photos is about the masking tape – I wonder what people used in the past for that job?

PS – Nick had this to say about the masking tape. It sounds like a slice of real life to me:

‘As for masking tape, when I was apprenticed there wasn’t a roll in the yard, everything was cut-in with a brush, so thats what I learned to do. It was ok cutting-in a waterline if you were good, but successive years of cutting-in by someone inept would end up with the line creeping up by 1/2in every year, and sometimes it looked like a permanent wave pattern had been painted in!
‘Likewise, nothing was templated. “Template” was a dirty word and there was no 1/8in template ply in the place, as it was thought a waste of money.

‘No, they would much rather pick up the piece of wood to be used, even if it was teak, rough mark it, cut it , and plane it to fit, plenty of pieces went through the bandsaw and back home for kindling, not by me of course, but learning that way was good for me as you had to get it right first time. As an apprentice, when I got it wrong I was told I was a ‘f****** c***’ , as I wasn’t keen on being called that I soon learned to get it right first time every time. When I did well the best I got was to be told I was “not bad for a boy”, but then I knew I had arrived.’

Nick has sent us quite a few photos of the Lisa project over the past few weeks.  If you’d like to see all our posts about his work, click here and scroll down the page. If you don’t already know him, Nick comes from Devon and specialises in new builds in clinker and carvel for  sail, motor and rowing power from 8ft to 28ft with a special emphasis on West Country style and design, and also takes on repairs and refits from 25ft to 50ft. He can be contacted by email at nick_smith_boatbuilder@yahoo.com and by phone on 07786 693370.

Don’t miss something good – subscribe to intheboatshed.net

Heckstall-Smith and du Boulay on the origin of 19th century racing yachts


Wood engraving The Yacht Race – A Sketch from the Deck of a
Competing Yacht, was published in Harper’s Weekly in  1872.
Taken from the Wikimedia Commons

Although Charles II was almost as enthusiastic about yachting as he was about his many mistresses, his collection of 16 yachts do not seem to have had much of an influence on later racers.

From their researches including studying Clark’s History of Yachting up to the year 1815, Heckstall-Smith and Du Boulay say later racing yachts derived their form largely from revenue cutters.

They write: ‘the fashionable type of cutter was about three and a quarter beams to her length, her midship section was so round it might have been drawn with a pair of compasses. She had a nearly vertical stem, and a  short counter high above the water. The greatest breadth was just abaft or close abreast of the mast. The bow was therefore bluff, and the run long and often not ungraceful.’

The type was known as ‘cod’s head and mackerel tail’ and had evolved  in competition with the craft used by smugglers. This seems to me to be a case of a rather imperfect form of evolution, if faster boats could have been achieved by moving the greatest beam aft, but there are some good stories about how the same boat builders worked for both smugglers and  the revenue men.

Living in Kent as I do, this one from Heckstall-Smith and du Boulay appeals to me particularly: ‘it has been recorded that Mr White of Broadstairs, whose descendants afterwards moved to Cowes, used to lay down two cutters side by side, very much as 19-metres and 15-metres are laid down today, and the Government officials used to puzzle their brains to puzzle out which would turn out the faster, knowing that whichever boat they bought, the other would be sold for smuggling.’

For more on revenue cutters at intheboatshed.net, click here.

Don’t miss something good – subscribe to intheboatshed.net

The boatbuilding bug bites another victim

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

Ed’s 10ft Maine Skiff, built from plans and instructions
supplied by Duck Trap Woodworking

Ed Engarto in New York State is one of the many people who build a boat, only to discover that it can be a life-changing experience.

This seems to happen a lot. I know there’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained from building even the smallest boat and then using your creation on the water, but I think there’s more to this phenomenon: perhaps it’s the fact of slowly over time creating a tangible object, the quality of which the maker can judge and come to terms with as they proceed, perhaps it’s the discovery that, after all, one can learn new skills and complete a new category of projects, or maybe it’s the result of all those quiet hours the boatbuilder spends working alone in quiet contemplation.

Ed seems to me to be a typical convert to amatuer boatbuilding. I hope he enjoys his second project as much as he did his first.

He writes:

‘I built this little ten foot, lapstrake row boat over a period of three plus years, ending in July of 2008. The design comes from Duck Trap Woodworking and is known to those fine folks as their Maine Skiff. I started out journaling every working session and before the molds were even finished, the entries began to touch on life experiences, the trials of a large project, the virtue of commitment, and some thoughts about events that took place during the skiff’s construction. It actually became a mechanism through which I shared the most influential events in my life and therefore is much more than a sequence of construction steps explained. I learned so many boatbuilding skills and enjoyed the project so much, that I have become a lover of wood and water and am already looking towards my next boat.’

See the Duck Trap Woodworking website.

Don’t miss something good – subscribe to intheboatshed.net