Tag: practical boatbuilding

An entertaining article about sailing canoe pioneer John MacGregor

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A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe

‘After taking on supplies at Gravesend, I shoved off into the tide, and lit a cigar, and now I felt we had fairly started,’ wrote philanthropist, barrister and pioneer of the Victorian canoeing craze, John MacGregor in his classic A thousand miles in the Rob Roy canoe.

He seems to have been a highly entertaining if largely bonkers character, from what we learn from this article published in Sea Kayaker Magazine.

I really must get around to reading Macgregor’s book myself!

See this post for construction information and ‘plans’ for Rob Roy-style canoe described by Neison in his book Practical boatbuilding for amateurs.

Plans for making a model of the 10ft double-ended McLachlan skiff

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skiff model plans pic

A sample of Paul’s impressive detailed plans of the 10ft double ended skiff from Practical Boatbuilding

Paul O’Connor has been kind enough to send me a set of the plans he created before building his model of the 10ft double ended skiff from the book Practical Boatbuilding for Amateurs. The model has been a step along the route to building the real thing in epoxy ply, and because this is an attractive craft and and interesting challenge, I’m sure other intheboatshed.net readers will be interested in making their own models from the drawings.

I’ve divided the drawings, which are in pdf form, between two zips:

10ft skiff drawings folder 1

10ft skiff drawings folder 2

As I’ve pointed out before, there’s quite a lot of online background to this project. The original drawings and information from Practical Boatbuilding  are here, an earlier intheboatshed.net post on the model project is here and two threads discussing the Practical Boatbuilding skiff and Paul’s project are here and here.

Here’s a view of Paul’s three-dimensional model of the skiff:

10_skiff_iso_view

Model-making progress and drawings of Paul Connor’s Practical Boatbuilding skiff project

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The 10ft double-ended skiff model

Paul Connor has kindly sent a photo of his model of the 10ft double-ended skiff from Practical Boatbuilding for Amateurs, together with his extensive set of computer-generated construction drawings.

There’s a good amount of background to this project. The original drawings and information from Practical Boatbuilding  are here, an earlier intheboatshed.net post on the model project is here and two threads discussing the Practical Boatbuilding skiff and Paul’s project are here and here.

For Paul, the model is a proof of concept that shows the boat can be made at full size using the clinker ply technique, but I think many people will enjoy making a model of this little boat. I hope they do.

I think the model shows two things. The point that a boat built the these old plans is practical and will be beautiful is clearly the first, but the second is that in my opinion the boat itself would be even more elegant and better in the water if made 12-18 inches longer on the same beam and draught.

Download Paul’s pdfs of the drawings here: sheet-1; sheet-2; sheet-3; sheet-4; sheet-5; sheet-6; sheet-7; sheet-8; sheet-9; sheet-10; sheet-11; sheet-12; sheet-13; sheet-14; sheet-15.

Many thanks Paul!

PS Readers interested in making a model of something simpler, might check out the free plans page!

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