Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

Building my first Drift Boat - 16' Double-Ender with Transom

Hello folks,

I stepped foot in a McKenzie style drift boat for the first time nearly ten years ago, and have been wanting to own one ever since. I have decided (finally) to start building my first drift boat; the Original McKenzie Double Ender with Transom.

I purchased Rogers book, as well as the plans from 'The Rivers Touch' and I have been taking small steps towards starting the project for over a year now: building a shop space, purchasing tools, researching, cold calling strangers for advice, gathering materials etc.

I started last week, and have learned a few important things already:

Scarf joints are not as scary as they look (I wish I hadn't have waited so long).
Being a complete beginner at something is rough - somehow I forgot that.
This website and the contributions made by all of you is invaluable. I contemplated not posting but then realized that it would be selfish not to give back.

I am open to as much advice, suggestions, criticisms, stories and photos as possible!

My goal is to have this boat on the water by the Winter of 2021 (changed from 2017 haha)

So, here goes. I hope you enjoy watching me work through my first technical wood project ever ;). Maybe this can help a newcomer like me down the road.

Thanks All,

Kyle

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mike Thomas on January 4, 2017 at 1:56pm

Ive checked that out in the book, I think I made a copy of it too. That is such a pretty boat, The one pic in the book of the guy standing in the river with one is the same river I took mine down for the first time too. I should have built that boat to begin with

Thanks for the table drawing

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Permalink Reply by Kyle Hryniw on January 6, 2017 at 12:08pm

You're welcome Mike. Yeah it is a pretty boat- very nice lines.
That's cool about the pic. So that's the Au Sable River then. What's that fishery like?

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Permalink Reply by Mike Thomas on January 6, 2017 at 1:44pm

In one word, awesome!! Its considered one of the Crown Jewel trout river systems which includes the North, South, East,West and Middle branches, and a 8 mile flys only no kill zone that is known as the Holy Water.

Over 150 miles of conservatively labeled Blue Ribbon fishery for browns, brooks and rainbows, and also stretches for steelhead and salmon. Was home to the Grayling trout (that are now gone) and passes through the town of (hense the name) Grayling Mich., and is the birthplace of Trout Unlimited. Its one of the worlds most written and dreamed about classic trout streams and IMO the perfect river to christen a river boat!! (special thanks to Dorf for helping me with that)

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Permalink Reply by Phillip Westendorf on January 7, 2017 at 7:48pm

Mike,

I'll second that. the Au Sable has it all.

Dorf

PS: I took the picture above.

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Permalink Reply by Kyle Hryniw on January 10, 2017 at 2:55pm

Nice- well that sounds pretty sweet. Might have to add the Au Sable to the 'maybe someday' list.

Thanks for the info Mike. Nice boat BTW, and a well-composed photograph to boot;).

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Permalink Reply by Kyle Hryniw on April 3, 2017 at 3:47pm

Well, I finally got back to it.

I have 3 more frames to build and drill, then I'm on to the stem and transom.

My material from Noah's marine is in.. so nothing holding me back now.

I found the frames to be tedious! Not sure how exact I have to be. I'm sure the frames will be forgiving once I start roughing them in the "free-form" way.

After reading all of the horror stories using a cheap taper jig, I decided to make a simple one with no moving parts (plywood). There aren't any screw holes in the work piece which is nice..

Below are some photos of the test piece.. it worked pretty well. Here is a youtube link from where I got the idea. . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCQvs5WyZ40

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Permalink Reply by Bennett Yarbrough on April 3, 2017 at 7:10pm

Good idea, I ended up free handing mine because the 20 dollar jig I bought was too big to use on a contractor table saw. Looking forward to following along.

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Permalink Reply by Kyle Hryniw on April 7, 2017 at 2:10pm

Right on. I contemplated that too. I agree, I have a contractor saw also, and it's definitely cumbersome to use the jig on it.

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Permalink Reply by Kyle Hryniw on August 17, 2021 at 12:28pm

After a move across the province, two career changes, and only maybe 20 hours on the boat since this last post a few years ago, I'm back in action folks.