Woody Jones builds a model Julie skiff

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Woody Jones’ model of the Julie skiff

Woody Jones has written to share these photos he has made of the intheboatshed.net Julie skiff – the little wire figures are a lot of fun!

See our model here and Ben Crawshaw’s model here.

Plans for making the model are here and for making the complete rowing skiff are here.

For more on the skiff, the plans for the boat and for the model:

Is anyone building the stitch-and-glue intheboatshed.net skiff?
Model Julie skiff photos from Ben Crawshaw

Complete free plans package for the intheboatshed.net flat-bottomed 15ft 6in skiff
intheboatshed.net skiff – drawings and coordinates for stitch and glue
intheboatshed.net skiff – photos of our model, and maybe yours too?
Intheboatshed.net skiff – now we can make a model
Intheboatshed.net skiff progress
Early drawings for a 15ft 5in lightweight flat-bottomed American-style skiff

Complete free plans package for the intheboatshed.net flat-bottomed 15ft 6in skiff



STOP PRESS – THE FIRST JULIE SKIFF HAS BEEN BUILT AND LAUNCHED BY BILL GAY- CLICK HERE FOR PICTURES

STOP PRESS AGAIN – INITIAL SKETCHES FOR A SAILING VERSION OF THIS BOAT CAN BE FOUND HERE.

ALSO – IF YOU BUILD THIS BOAT OR A MODEL OF IT, PLEASE CONTACT ME AT GMATKIN@GMAIL.COM . I’M HAPPY TO OFFER HELP AND ADVICE, AND VERY MUCH WANT TO KNOW HOW THE PROJECT GOES!

After gardening for much of the day, this evening I’ve spent a couple of happy hours tidying up and sorting out the plans for the intheboatshed.net Julie skiff. (NB – See the bottom of this post if you need plans for a similar but smaller boat.)

So tan-tara! With an imaginary fanfare, tonight for the first time I offer you – a download of the finalised plans for the rowing-only version of the Julie 15ft 7in flat bottomed skiff for plywood stitch and glue construction, including my explanatory essay on her design and purpose, and notes on her construction.

She swallows up five sheets of ply, and for those those who like to think about these things, at her design displacement and trimmed so that the water just kisses the transom, her wetted area is about 38sqft, with a prismatic coefficient of 0.55. Neither figure would be outstanding for a round-bottomed boat, but the wetted area in particular is not at all bad for a simple rowing boat like this. With a flat-bottomed skiff there’s no easy way to improve on either without making the boat much narrower on the bottom, with all that would entail.

Like this boat? Send your comments to gmatkin@gmail.com.

I think she’s a sweet little boat and I’m very much looking forward to seeing some examples afloat. I still plan to develop a sailing rig, plans for a more traditional chine-log style construction, and I’m thinking also of both longer and shorter versions – the shorter will be aimed at creating a small easy to build skiff capable of being built in a British-style garage.

If you do build the Julie skiff, please send me photos and reports at gmatkin@gmail.com, and also please let me know how the project goes. At least while the numbers being built are small, if you hit problems I will be very happy to provide advice to make sure your boat is a success.

Download: intheboatshed.net Julie skiff plans

See all posts so far on this boat:

Complete free plans package for the intheboatshed.net flat-bottomed 15ft 6in skiff
intheboatshed.net skiff – drawings and coordinates for stitch and glue
intheboatshed.net skiff – photos of our model, and maybe yours too?
Intheboatshed.net skiff – now we can make a model
Intheboatshed.net skiff progress
Early drawings for a 15ft 5in lightweight flat-bottomed American-style skiff

PS – It’s become clear that depending on your build, some folks will find the thwart a little high – if that could be you, it will be a very simple job to make the seat lower if you do so at an early stage.

More free boat plans at intheboatshed.net

If you’d prefer a smaller project of this kind, check the 12ft Ella skiff and the 14ft Sunny skiff.

This boat is designed to be built using the stitch and glue technique – if you haven’t done this before you might be interested in my book Ultrasimple Boat Building: 17 Plywood Boats Anyone Can Build or one of the other books on this topic available from Amazon.

Early drawings for a 15ft 5in lightweight flat-bottomed American-style skiff

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Preliminary drawings for a 15ft 5in flat-bottomed light rowing
skiff, 500lbs displacement

Although the 15ft light-weight American-style flat-bottomed plywood rowing skiff has become an elegant design classic, it’s perhaps surprising that there aren’t more sets of plans around. So, after some prompting by Win Cnoops of the Slipway Cooperative early this summer I’ve started work on one. It’s high time I got around to some designing again!

Here are some snaps of my early results. The waterline here is at 500lbs, and the discerning eye will be aware that the bows will be just out of the water most of the time, and that will also have noticed that the panels at the entry are quite straight, while those at the stern have more shape.

Boats like this can be relatively easy to build particularly if you go the stitch and glue route and aren’t too fussy about the finish – but they can more than repay the effort that goes into a more traditional construction and a good-quality varnish finish. They also row well and are a natural river boat, but must be used in fairly gentle wind and wave conditions.

My intention is to work up two or maybe more versions of this skiff based on the same basic hull – one will be a vanilla stitch-and-glue job that almost anyone might be able to build, while the other would have additional ‘gingerbread’ in the form of a more traditional build, more elegant seating arrangements, a shaped transom and so on.

See the whole series of posts on the intheboatshed.net skiff Juliealmost complete plans, our model, drawings for model-making, rough nesting, lines and initial drawings.

If a tender is what you’re planning to build, check out my Light Dinghy plans.

PS – It seems I’m not alone in cooking up a new set of plans. Check John Welsford’s site for what sounds like an interesting design project.

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