Tag: elegant design

Free Scandinavian-style skiff boatbuilding plans

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Mark Wallace’s elegant Black Skiff

Boatbuilding plans for the Black Skiff have been designed and made available for free by Mark Wallace – he says all he asks for is to be given the credit for designing the boat.

I think it’s an elegant design. The plans are not likely to be the easiest for first-time boatbuilders to follow, but it would be well worth picking the required skills up by reading one of the classic books on this kind of boatbuilding. See the Intheboatshed.net Amazon bookshop for something suitable.

Mark ways she’s a strong light-weight boat loosely with strong links to Scandinavian types. She proven to be an excellent rower, has a capacity of four adults and has a flat bottom for easy beaching.

Go to Mark’s website for more information and plans in pdf format: http://www.markwallaceshipwright.com/plans.html

By the way, don’t miss Mark’s impressive collection of testimonials.

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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 Julie – almost 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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