Water Craft magazine for January-February includes more boat plans

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Water Craft January

Water Craft editor Pete Greenfield has written to say that the January-February issue of his magazine will be in the newsagents from the 17th December. Here’s what he has to say:

Well, if you’ll permit the conceit that a boating magazine can have a sub-plot, this issue’s can be summed up as: What a difference a wooden boat specialist can make.

Wooden boat specialists like…

Alec Jordan of Jordan Boats who joined forces with the Scottish Fisheries Museum to launch the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project, commissioning Iain Oughtred to design the 20ft (6m) St Ayles Skiff, which local groups can build from a modestly priced pre-cut plywood kit. Amateur wooden boat builder Chris Perkins describes how they built the prototype.

Wooden boat builder and designer Matt Newland of Swallow Boats combines ply-epoxy hull construction with water ballast and carbon spars to produce the 20’ (6m) Baycruiser, the most innovative and exciting small cruising yacht in years.

Wooden boat designer Francois Vivier whose p-ractical pocket gaffer Meaban is now also available as a pre-cut plywood kit for home completion.

Wooden boat builder and designer Paul Gartside of Nova Scotia gives us full plans + offsets for a traditional round-sterned workboat with so much character you’ll want to get a craftsman to build her for you. But who? Perhaps one of the members of the…

Wooden Boatbuilders Trade Association. Wherever you live in the UK and whether you want a wooden boat built or restored, using traditional or modern methods, there’s a WBTA member not too far away with all the skills to do the job.

And one wooden boat builder who will be long remembered around Cornwall and beyond…

Ralph Bird, the great Cornish pilot gig enthusiast who sadly passed away in November, having built no less than 29 gigs and enthused a whole new generation of rowers.

It sounds like another great issue packed with material to me. It’s nice to see the old practice of magazines publishing plans coming back, and good also to see the WBTA getting itself some publicity, by the way.

Subscribe to Water Craft now

Boatbuilding Academy student launch day, December 2009 – some early photos

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Reader Brian Pearson has kindly given me permission to put up a few of the photos he and his son took of the Boatbuilding Academy’s student launch day last Saturday. Thanks Brian!

He tells me that it was a really nice event with lots of people, a watery winter sun – which was great after all the terrible weather we’ve been having – and lots of lovely boats and happy boat builders with their families.

There will be more when principal Yvonne Green manages to send some over together with details of the boats, as I hope she will – and perhaps with luck the students themselves will chip in also.

I must say there are some delightful pieces of work here – particularly the pram with no metal components of any kind. Take a bow, boatbuilding students of Lyme!

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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 .