Plans 4 Boats - Building Wood Boats

One of the oldest branches of engineering is boat building. It is concerned with constructing the hulls of boats and for sailboats, the masts, spars and rigging. Building wood boats is more popular to amateur boat builders due to the reason that wood is cheap, buoyant, widely available and can be constructed easily.

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For beginners, it is ideal to learn the parts of a boat such as; the bow, bulkhead, chines, deck, gunwale, keel, keelson, rudder, sheer, stem, stern, strake and transom. You may search for the definition of each boat part upon deciding if you want to build one.

Wood usually does not resist abrasions and if fresh water or aquatic organisms will be allowed to penetrate the wood it will be a cause for deterioration. Generally, oak and cedar are selected for building wood boats (in building the ship´s hull), due to its rot resistance characteristic. Woods such as mahogany, okoume and iroko are also being utilized to construct the ship´s hull; however, if you intend to build a boat using these new wood species, you need to take extra attention to make sure that the wood is indeed FSC certified. Normally, the wood is covered by a covering, epoxy for instance. Structural polymer (SP) method or the much older West method is being used in epoxy covering.

Usually, teak is being used to construct the deck, while keruing, azobe, merbau are used for the beams. You will need glue, screws and/or nails in order to join the wooden components.

Some types of wood construction that amateurs usually apply includes; carvel, which involves attaching wooden planks to a frame to form a smooth hull; lapstrake is a technique wherein wooden planks are fixed to each other with a slight overlap that is beveled for a firm fit; strip planking method is mostly preferred by amateurs in building wooden boat since it is fast, avoids complicated temporary jig work and shaping of the planks are not required.

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This author writes about Plans 4 Boats and Wooden Model Boat Plans.