Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by AJ DeRosa on July 25, 2014 at 9:32am

David,
It is impossible to determine a repair quote without seeing the damage. Post some good pics of the entire boat and close ups of the damaged areas and you may get some responses.

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Permalink Reply by Don Hanson on July 26, 2014 at 9:49pm

   AJ, you got it. 

Giving an estimate or a bid without digging into the boat a little or  at least getting detailed pictures is not something that anyone wants to do, most likely. The damage can look small and easy to fix (to you)....but it can be, and often is, a lot more involved than it looks.  "Chine Log, chine log cap, some plywood..." pretty vague.  If I were to bid on just that, I'd say "$2 grand" which would cover my expenses and a little money extra... if the boat needed really extensive rebuilding...I like building and repairing boats, but not enough to pay some else in order to do their work on their boat...

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Permalink Reply by chris towles on July 27, 2014 at 11:37pm

Agreed. I got sucked into helping a friend and former employer with his raft frame. I prob put 60 hours and hundreds of dollars of my own money and materials into building a custom drybox and running boards. I was barely able to recoup my expenses and my labor netted me less than $2 an hour with what I got paid. That's a pretty poor wage to run power tools that could cut your fingers off, mix sticky nasty glues, sand itchy fiberglass, breath toxic solvents and all the other "wonderful" things that come with building a boat. Then a few months later, the same guy forgets to strap the removable lid down to the drybox and loses it somewhere along the highway. Then he's asking me how quickly I could make a new one. Bottom line is... Building a boat is a fun hobby but it's not the kind of thing you could ever really make profitable. So I try to work on my own projects and try to tell people to take a hike when they want me to "help them out" for free because they don't want to do it themselves.

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Permalink Reply by Don Hanson on July 28, 2014 at 7:16am

"Building a boat is a fun hobby but it's not the kind of thing you could ever really make profitable."

  Very few ever make it 'really profitable' because there are so many people who want to try it on their own, especially when it comes to drift boats..

  I worked full time in a full service custom boatyard, with a nice line of semi-custom glass rowing and sailing dingys, a dock with a marine railway that could haul up to 60' and 50-ton yachts into our enclosed work shed, with full time rigging service, custom painter, interior joinery, hull repair and custom racing sailboat building...I apprenticed under a guy from Norway and learned traditional lapstrake wooden boat building, did a lot of WEST System cold molded building, restored fancy wooden sailboats as one of the few yards with that capacity on the West Coast...   A dream job, except the wages were 'survival' level, even as a journeyman shipwright.   The economics just didn't support decent wages.  I had to leave and go back to house carpentry to keep afloat.

   It's still the same today, but probably worse. With the economic downturn there are lots of used boats available at less than materials cost to build them.  Only the very wealthy are having new boats built, the second-tier wealthy are letting theirs go without much maintenance.

   Chris is right about the nature of the work, also.  Nine tenths of the work involved in boats is somewhat unpleasant....It takes  expensive tools, ties up a lot of workspace... and there is no way to eliminate totally the dust, sanding, solvents, etc..

   Now we've probably scared David off...grin! 

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Permalink Reply by Rick Newman on July 28, 2014 at 4:20pm

David, the bottom line is wooden drift boats are a labor of love. If we have pictures of the damage on your boat, a "survey" of where the wood is soft or possibly even rotten it is possible to work you the the details of repairing your boat. It will take time, dedication, labor and money. Not as much money as if you paid someone to do it but you will have the skills to do more repairs in the future and will have learned a lot about yourself. Power tools will allow you to do the work somewhat faster, not always better so you trade time for money and time to learn the skills. The folks that built the early drift boat didn't have the tools of today.I built my boat over 4 1/2 years on a tight budget. I had quite a few tools and have more now.

To remove your chine caps a hack saw blade might be used for cutting off the ring shank nails, a reciprocating saw would be faster. A solid, but cheap putty knife could also possibly be used to help pry off the chine cap. A hand screw driver will work for removing the potential screws that hold the bottom on, but an electric one would be faster. An old fashioned brace and bit could have a bot filed down to make a phillips bit to remove screws, not as fast as an electric driver but still used today by some traditional boat builders and repair folks.

A hand saw and some sort of a vice could be used to fashion a new frame piece. Make a bevel gauge from a hack saw blade and a small nut and bolt to help you determine the angle to cut to.

I have bought numerous handplanes for less than $7 each. My friend came home from an auction last week with 10 handplanes and he paid a total of $15 for them all. Hand chisels can be found in a variety of places. With used tools you will have to learn how to maintain them, sharpen them and how to use them. There is a gentleman named Bob Smalser that has posted quite a bit of information on restoring and rebuilding old tools.

I will help you find the answers you need to repair your boat. There is a huge amount of info here on wooden boat pages. I will bet that almost every question that you are going to require has already been provided. I have read almost every post on Wooden Boat people over the last five years and can remember most of what has been asked and the answers that were given. are all the answers correct? I don't know. Are there a variety of opinions on how to do the repairs and what the best way is, yes.

The bottom line is there is potentially some rotten wood on your boat. What you need to do to start the process is find out the extent of the damage. You may have to sand the paint and such off, probe with a ice pick or a sharpened nail and mark the bad spots with a Sharpie to get an overall picture. Every wooden part on your boat can be remade, it was made by someone originally and can be replicated, especially if you have the original piece. You may have to disassemble more of your boat than you had planned on but everything can be replaced or repaired. The question is how much time, money and effort do you want to put in to have a wonderful, handmade wooden boat that you repaired by yourself?

Ask AJ how many boats he and his crew have restored to life. Search for the name Dutch and see what he has done to bring some wounded boats back to life.

Post some more pictures of the damaged or leaking area so we can see what is occurring. I live in Spokane and every few months travel to the Tacoma area. Let's communicate and I will endeavor to meet up with you and give you my opinion on what I see is wrong with your boat. I don't have AJ's, Dutches or Don Hansons background but I can tell you if the wood is rotten and how the parts and pieces of your boat go together. 

Have you purchased Drift Boats and River Dories yet? It was written by Roger Fletcher and is available directly through him at riverstouch.com.

Best regards,

Rick Newman

All the repairs you have mentioned have been done before by people with little to no experience. Will your boat be on the water in a few weeks or days? Probably not.

Do you "have" to use epoxy to do the basic repairs, not necessarily. How long will they last without epoxy?

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Permalink Reply by David on July 30, 2014 at 7:44pm

I can see why a wooden boat owner with little to no knowledge or a place to have one repaired feels...Hey dude nice boat .....Good luck finding a place to get it fixed...

Right about now a lighter with some petrol...and a few  friends to join in the roast.... makes a lot of sense.....

I'll make sure I post some pictures of my boat when Im finished with it...!!!!!....Custom flames will be an understatement..!!!!!. hell I might even post it on youtube to see how many hit's it get's .....I get it ....

really....

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Permalink Reply by chris towles on July 30, 2014 at 9:54pm

Well, if you are really too scared to break out the saw and do some pretty basic carpentry work, filling the gaps with caulk and paint, then owning a wood boat probably isnt for you. If you really dont want the boat, there is probably somebody that does willing to do the work themselves. List it on craigslist and sell it cheap and someone will buy it. No bonfire needed.

Now all that being said, all the repairs you mentioned are fairly basic, and covered well here in previous posts. Epoxy does amazing things to make shattered and rotted wood back into usable panels. A search and reading will do you good. Then go out and fix it yourself. You wont take the amount of work for granted and you will be less likely to abuse it and inflict further damage, and if you do...errr, when you do, you'll know how to fix it. Fishing on here for someone to fix your boat for cheap wont get you anywhere unfurtunatley. Mostly garage builders and wood boat nuts here. Its a fun club to be in, but the price of admission generally is a bit of boat maintance. Not the end of the world if you ask me. If that all sounds like a bit too much, then look for a glass or aluminum boat. They take less maintenance, but trust me, they all have their quirks too.

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Permalink Reply by Don Hanson on July 31, 2014 at 8:01am

  Find a new boat?

  It's often less expensive than trying to restore an older boat, especially if you are going to pay someone to do the repairs/restoration for you. 

 I tell people this pretty often.........Sadly, for both the rookie owner who bought himself "a deal"...or a "nice older boat that needs a little work" and for the few people still trying to make a living building new boats....these boats are labor-intensive to repair but not too hard  for the backyard builder to do it yourself. 

  One factor involved in repairing these boats is how it was built.   Estimating a repair really needs to be 'hands-on".   Because these boats are often built by non-boatbuilders, they often contain very bad mistakes...wrong screws or nails, poor materials choices, etc.. 

Also, poor care and maintenance or botched attempts by a previous owner to try to fix something, that can cause huge headaches..  I had one guy bring a nice Keith Steel to me that had been bead-blasted!  The previous owner was trying to save sanding time by doing it that way...I think that was the end of that boat...

  There isn't any way to repair an older boat (if you plan on using that boat a while longer)  that does not involve a lot of labor hours...often it will take more hours for the needed repairs than it would take to start  from scratch with a new boat...and often, it will take enough more hours to pay for whole new boat,  even if you pay the builder's labor hours at below McDonalds wages.

  We are trying to be real and honest with the OP I think.  If you want no labor, you probably want a Lavro...the only thing they require is a pressure wash now and again...

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