Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

56" Wide Bottom troubles... A lesson is what NOT to do.

Hello all -

ran into some problems this weekend when trying to fit my bottom that I thought I would share.

My build has a 56" bottom and I stretched it to 18' gunnel. When scarphing the extra width onto the bottom I had a really good idea..

I could just add all of the extra width to only one side and save myself an

extra scarph, right???? So I added an 8' x 14" piece and was very proud of how smart I was.

WRONG.

When building an extra wide bottom you MUST add the width to both side of your 48" stock piece. Otherwise you can no longer use the centerline of the 48" middle piece and have to slide everything off centerline approx. 3", which leaves you with 2 little triangles of empty space in front of and behind the side scarph on the bottom of your boat.

I don't know if I would still have this problem if I had stuck to the original design of a 16' boat or not, but ce' la vie, I get to do another scarph...

Have fun all... I have some sawdust to make.

P.S. My buddy borrowed my camera when the wind blew the roof off his house last weekend, when I get it back I will post some pics.

Greg

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dave Barnes on March 22, 2012 at 7:56am

I centered the main panels and I used butt joints, not scarfs for attaching the two side slivers. The nice thing is that it's quick and easy and the backing piece in fully concealed in the side compartments on the inside of the boat.

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Permalink Reply by Greg Jensen on March 23, 2012 at 7:06am

Hi Dave -

As an update - I used used dowells on the butt joints, epoxied them in with system 3 and it seemed to work very well.

With the warm weather that just hit us, I finished fiberglassing the inside of my bottom last night and will install the bottom and glass the outside this weekend. Getting excited - its really starting to look like a boat.