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| Due to popular demand: Pirogue
instructions/plans
Not sure if this is a pirogue, a dory, or a canoe, but it's a very simple and cheap boat to make. Actually, these were designed to be "disposable" boats, and or course, everyone liked these the best. Preliminaries: Some notes: 1) Use small batches of epoxy. 2) It is much easier to wipe up epoxy "globs" while they are still soft, than to sand them down after they have hardened. 3) If you are a big guy (like me), you might want to either glass the entire bottom, or add a piece of lauan inside to take point loads from your knees. 4) Standard legal disclaimer applies. This is a cheap, disposable boat. It's not meant for anything other than messing around in relatively flat water. I'm not a boat designer, and I make no claims as to the seaworthiness or anything else about these boats. 5) My costs for these boats were so low because I already hade the paint, epoxy, and fiberglass on hand. Your mileage may vary. Materials: For epoxy I used Raka, pretty good quality, and a decent price. You could use West if you want, but but I don't think the added money would really make much difference on these boats. A quart or two will do, unless you intend to coat the whole thing and glass the bottom, then get a gallon. When you order your epoxy, order some fiberglass as well. A couple of yards of cloth should do, if you don't have a problem with cutting it. Or, if you are feeling lazy, go ahead and order some 3 inch wide fiberglass tape. You will need some kind of filler for the fillets. I've used just about everything, included sawdust that I ran through the blender, but what I use the most now is the sanding dust that collects in the dust bag on my belt sander. If you don't have a ready source, wheat flour will work fine. Construction: Start by joining two pieces of 1/4 inch ply together end to end to make a 16ft by 4ft piece of plywood. This sounds a lot harder than it really is, I'm fond of the Payson/Carnell fiberglass butt joint myself, but a backing block would work as well. If your really adventuresome, you could try scarph joints. Next, cut the sides out. These should be two strips of plywood 10 inches wide and 16 feet long, and will leave a 28 inch or so strip of plywood left for the bottom. Make a 45 degree cut on both ends of the side pieces. Cut a 2x4 with a 25 degree angle cut on both ends, 27 inches long on the short side. Attach 3/4x1-1/4 chine logs, prebeveled to 25 degrees, to the inside of the side pieces. Screw the sides to the 2x4 with a couple of drywall screws. Wire the bow and stern together. The best way I've found to cut the angles on the chine logs at the bow and stern is to pull the pieces together, and run a reciprocating say between them, cutting them both at the same time. Check for fairness, and apply an epoxy fillet to the bow and stern. I would recommend putting as few wires in as you can get away with, and putting epoxy fillet glue around the wires, letting it set overnight. The next day, pull the wires, fill in the gaps, and add the glass. Plane/sand the chine logs down so the bottom will fit on nice and flat. Put the bottom piece on, trace out where it needs to be cut, cut it out, glue it on and tack it down. I tack mine down with a staple gun, but small screws or nails would work too. Sand and round the sides, apply fillet material, apply glass. Sand to an acceptable smoothness. Paint. Use 100% acrylic house paint, stay away from porch paint unless you put on a half dozen layers of primer.
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