Ok, from what I can surmise with the stitch and glue technique you just cut the sides, cut the bottom, "stitch them together" then ??? what, epoxy the inside corners, take the stitching off then do outside?  This next step is a mystery and I can't find a build-along that shows it?

 

My first boat is framed (wish I would have stitched it).

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Steven, take a gander at this site http://montana-riverboats.com/ .There you will find information on stitch and glue drift boat building. If you do searches back through the 14,000 entries on the accompanying forum there you will find a wealth of knowledge to answer your questions. I just Googled stitch and glue boat building and got 38,000 potential sites to look at.

Happy waves to You,

Rick Newman
On my Kingfisher by MBB; once the sides are stitched to the bottom, I filleted the inside corner with thickened epoxy, for the stitching I used galvanized wire from a two strand fencing from the farm and home supply. The galvanizing didn't stick to the epoxy which allowed me to put a solid fillet in one pass and once the epoxy cured I just removed the wire. On the first boat I built I put in small 6" fillets then removed the wire and made a larger fillet to go over the whole interior corner. Once the wire is removed I put a larger fillet in and while that began to cure I wetted out the 6" 12-oz biaxial fiberglass. The wetted fiberblass is then placed in over the fillet while the fillet was still soft, then smooth out both the fiberglass and the fillet to make the transition from the bottom and the sides perfectly round and smooth.
Once the glass has fully cured you can flip the boat, smooth out the outside into a radius, fill any voids with thicken epoxy, then glass the chine with the same biaxial fiberglass, and you have a boat.

scott
Thanks so much for the explanation. Man do I wish I would have done mine that way!

Thanks for the reply Rick, I am a google fanatic, I just wanted to hear it from someone on here so I could follow up with questions ;-)

Thinking about building a smaller version of the one i'm building now and will do it stitch and glue!

God Bless
I used plastic electrical wire ties with the tie and tag end to the outside. Once the inner fillet was glassed and cured I flipped the boat and cut the plastic ties flush with the plywood. That leaves a small amount of plastic inside the fillet. I then glassed the outer chine. I did my first boat with wire and then read about someone using wire ties. They have saved me a bit of time ever since.
Never thought about the fact that you could just leave them in there!

SO the real "structure" of the boat comes from the seats and any shelving/boxes you install then?
I am sure the interior components add to the "structural" rigidity, but the boat is quite structurally sound once the gunnels are complete. If you go to http://www.montanaboatbuilders.com/ and look at the "recurve skiff" it has virtually no interior components that add to structure of the boat. The seats are pedestals and just the side shelves are in contact with the sides.
looking; standby.
Yeah, I think that is somewhat accurate. I have only ever done stitch and glue but my feeling is that the frames themselves give a framed boat a lot of their rigidity.

I built four little 8 ft rowboats (one for each child) as practice boats before starting my current project. I kept the dollars as low as possible by using Home Depot plywood and styrene resin instead of epoxy. I wanted to learn the tricks without spending too much money. I noticed right away that the plywood hull itself was very flexible. The boats got stiffer and stiffer when I started adding seats, knees and especially gunnels.

I am now building two Rapid Roberts and these are 14 ft long so the flexible hull issue is even more pronounced. I am noticing the same thing as I add the finishing touches to the first hull: It gets a whole lot stiffer with each addition. I was really worried at first but that worry has since gone away. I am confident that I will have good stiff boat boat when I am done.

Good luck,
Chris
Thanks for the comments, I take all of this in like a sponge.

Well, I am a boatbuilders nightmare; i'm a bored mechanical engineer. So when I started my boat I noticed that there were WAY too many ribs in the design. The rivers I fish rarely even reach Class I so running the rapids isn't going to happen. So I cut back on teh number and size/location of the ribs. After I put the seats in and the chines it is rock hard rigid. I think I could have done no ribs and it come out perfectly. But, she's almost done so we'll let this one ride.

Hey Chris, you gonna post pics while you build? or have you already?
I have posted a few. My wood working skill pale in comparison to some of what you see on these pages, so I only post small, blurry shots!

Go to http://www.woodenboatpeople.com/profile/ChrisPatterson and scroll to the bottom.

Post some pictures and details of yours. I am sure other would like to see them as well.
Those look great!

Woodworking skills and my name are rarely used in the same sentence.

I can do wonderful things with small pieces of wood, I have been a custom knife maker for years. It's when you get on a larger scale that I start getting shakey. Mainly because I lack large-scale tools. I have built this entire drift boat with a skill saw. I'll still post pics though!
Steven, I suspect you will like Tracy O'Brien's Headwaters 14; pictures of one that I just built are on my page, although I don't think any show the rib details well. He has really cut down on ribs and framing to take advantage of the hull structure. Bill Neal

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