How to make a wooden boat for a motor with your own hands?

Evgeny Bronov

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How to make a wooden boat for a motor with your own hands?

Many of those who are faced with the boating world are thinking about making a boat with their own hands. Often in the models offered on the market, some details do not suit. By doing the boat yourself, you can take into account all the important parameters for yourself. It is extremely important to decide which nuances are important, and what is the progress of building a boat with your own hands.

The information below, based on the feedback of shipbuilders, will become a reference in these matters.

How do you make a wooden boat with your own hands?

It is best to start making a vessel in the courtyard of a private house or in some spacious area. This will make it easier to take measurements, turn the boat over and do all the other important work of making the boat. If this is not possible, try to build in a well-lit, clean and dry area:

  1. so, for starters, it is important to prepare for yourself the so-called building material. It is best that you have at hand about 10 boards with a thickness of about 21-22 millimeters. They will be a good help to you in your difficult, but very interesting business. Also, to begin with, we prepare the bow of the future vessel, it will be a kind of triangle;
  2. it is worth noting that boaters say that at the very beginning of work it is worth making certain chamfers in the bow of their boards. This can greatly facilitate your work in the future. Many try to do everything as quickly as possible. But there is important advice in this matter - it is better to try to do the work measuredly and work through everything in good faith, so that later you do not have to over-perform any specific actions;
  3. so, when you have already assembled the very basis of your future small-sized vessel, it is worth installing a transom there as well. It is better to do it at an angle of 10 degrees. As time goes on, you may need to make a certain extension for your transom. This is done so that you can correctly install the engine of your water vehicle;

In general, on boat sites you can often find information that the transom is a very important thing and it is very important to choose the right motor for the transom. That is why it is worth focusing your attention on such things very much, and in no case should you neglect additional careful measurements and calculations. There is a recommendation to sit additionally on sites or forums of boaters, where people are well versed in fitting motors to transoms.

  1. so, when you complete the preliminary work described above, then it is already worth moving on to a new stage of preparations. In continuation of your construction, you need to take care of what the bottom of your water vehicle will be. The bottom of the boats is of several types: metal, wood and also plastic. You need to decide what kind of material you want to see on the bottom of your boat, and only then act according to your plan. Many note that the iron bottom can constantly create unnecessary noise and somehow distract passengers and the captain. In addition, the metal bottom will not be very rigid and durable - we can assume that such a design is not very reliable;
  2. however, some motor boaters describe that at some point they made a choice in favor of a wooden bottom, and later regretted this decision a little. After a certain time, certain cracks can form in the wooden bottom, sometimes even rather big ones. Sometimes one of the motorists even decides to disconnect the already finished bottom and make a new one. Often the new choice is a bottom material such as laminated plywood.

It is also simply necessary to fill all the studs with a strong material that will make your vessel solid, strong and windproof. Often a material such as butyl rubber sealant or something similar is used. Such sealants are most often used for hydro-isolation of all kinds of collisions and joints in houses that are made of panels. For many, this material is the most accessible.

Many boaters in their further operation of a small-sized vessel note that subsequently nothing blows through and does not leak after such work with joints on the boat being invented.

It is also important that your boat has a keel. It is possible to make such a keel with a size of, say, 50 by 50 centimeters from a material like a brand of aluminum. Although for some vessels this size may even be too small. Therefore, you need to accurately calculate the dimensions of your boat and the keel to it.

Often, the townsfolk adhere to the average parameters of a do-it-yourself wooden one: they take as a basis a length of 4 meters, a bottom width of 1 meter. The weight of such a boat is even less than 100 kilograms, and such a vehicle still fits the category of small-sized water vehicles.

Well, the last point may be further tests of your water mode of transport. Here, every builder-inventor will himself listen to his invention and look closely at it. Do I need to make any other adjustments or is everything functioning normally and smoothly? To do this, of course, for some time it is worth running in your boat on safe small reservoirs in which nothing terrible can happen.

In addition, I would like to note the moment that it is worth decorating and painting your boat the way you like it. Perhaps this is a trifle, but the boat will please the eye. And you should not start its full operation until absolutely all the work on its manufacture is completed.

Summarizing all of the above, we can highlight a small list of reference recommendations for the future boat builder:

  • in such a business as making a boat, it is extremely important to stock up on all the most necessary tools. It is best to initially consider what set of tools you will need to make a boat. If you don’t have literally one tool on hand, the whole job can fall into place. Whereas having all the necessary tools in your hands allows you to participate in construction without stops and pauses;
  • the place where the manufacture of your wooden boat will take place is extremely important. It is best if it is a very spacious room or a large area on the street. So you can easily turn and understand your future boat;
  • it is extremely important to carefully take all measurements, so that later you do not have to redo something;
  • read more comments and reviews on the Internet that will inspire you to build a boat. Lots of people have already tried this and you can too!