Got some good work done on the shelves today.
Today, I got the template all cut out for the shelves.  Also I got all the shelf material cut out on the table saw.  Since I am making the shelves 8 inches wide instead of 5, I had to figure a few things out on my own.  First, my new table of shelf loftings for the inside numbers worked fine.  A lot of math, but hey, that is what high school was for, right?

The first 16 feet of the boat!  Well, actually just the template.

I kind of went overboard connecting the two shelf templates together with the glue and staples!

Here is the shelf template and the shelf stock ready to go for tomorrow.

Also, I used a new trick to lift and move full sheets of plywood by myself.  I used a 12 foot piece of rope with a loop tie on each end.  Then placed the loop under the corner of each sheet of plywood, then used the middle of the rope as a perfectly balanced handle.

Another trick I used was when I needed to rip a full size sheet of plywood down, I always have trouble keeping constant tension against the fence.  This time I used my Rockwell Jawhorse with a feather board clamped in it to keep tension on the board.  It worked perfectly!  It was so easy to cut the large sheets that I may stop using the 9 foot straight edge and circular saw that I have been using for years because of trouble keeping the tension.  Here is the jawhorse and featherboard in action:

The Jawhorse is heavy enough that when you clamp the featherboard in (featherboard designed for a 3/4 table saw slot), that you can apply pretty good pressure and that board stayed right up against the fence.  It worked great.  I wish I would have had a jaw horse 20 years ago.  

When I was finished with all the math, it turned out that for the Great Alaskan, I only needed the front bow pieces (the first 8 feet) to be 18 inches wide (same as the plans).  Then I found out that even with the shelves being 8 inches wide instead of 5, I could make the next 8 feet  13 inches wide.  So I cut out my pieces of 3/4 and 3/8 Meranti, and I am ready to cut the templates of the shelves out tomorrow and get them glued up.  After that....stringers!

Tomorrow I hope to get the first 16 feet of shelves from the bow back, cut and glued up!

Check out fishyfish and Glacier Boats for some great info on boatbuilding!

Boat Officially Started -  Stem Built!
Well I got home and started doing some real boat building work finally!  First up was getting the boat temporary carport squared away.  After almost losing it to our tropical storm last week, we got it all ready to go.  Also, the pop up camper will have to go to the smaller awning that is ready to go as well.
This is the 40x20 awning we are building the boat under:

This is the little awning that Brenda's pop up camper will be going under in a few days:

Well, the first item up in the instructions in to build the boat stem.  This is the most forward edge of the boat, typically where the Bow Eye comes out that you would attach to the trailer winch.  I made mine out of solid cherry!  How classy is that!
Here is the cherry rough cut and then epoxied together:

 This is the "rough" stock I have laying around to make the stem out of.

 Here is the rough stock after getting it machined down to close final dimensions.

That is a happy pup in the background.  Bud Light was part of the instructions for the boat building, I think.

 I used a mixture of epoxy, silica and wood flour to get a peanut butter like glue to laminate the five pieces of cherry together.  Before this, I applied a heavy coat of regular epoxy to the wood to let it soak in for a strong bond.  Then I lightly clamped it to let the epoxy do it's wonderful gap filling thing.

On another note, my first attempt at mixing epoxy, wood flour and silica was kind of a mixed bag.  First I mixed a little too much regular epoxy that I didn't get to use fast enough.  It started smoking and melted the cup!

After that, I kind of got the hang of it.  Here is my epoxy mixing station and, complete with Vinegar to clean the epoxy (yes vinegar works as good as acetone!), the wood flour, silica and a 100 watt Yamaha amp for the Ipod.  A man has to have his priorities you know.

How many beers does it take to build a boat.....?  I don't know, but I bet it is a lot.
Now that the stem is built, tomorrow it is time to make the shelves.  Most boaters call them gunnels, but they are the flat spot you can sit on or if you are seasick, what you are leaning on when you are heaving!  I have the large area ready for lofting the shelves.  Tomorrow that is what I will do.

Also, I got the Versalam LVL beams delivered from Lowes the other day.  They are 24 feet long!  They will become the main stringers (the backbone) of the boat.  I will be cutting them to shape in a few days as well.

Well, tomorrow I will make the shelves for the boat.  Hopefully things will go smoothly!

Oh, another great link for those that are interested is the fishyfish website.   There are some really nice folks there with a great forum.  Also lots of build blogs.  I have learned a lot from this site.  Great boatbuilding info site.

This is not the exact boat I am going to build but isn't it a cool boat?

I have just about gotten my 40' x 20' temporary garage setup.  This is where I will be actually building the boat.  I also have a 30x20 woodshop that I will try to do the panel cutout and most of the other work in not related to actually hanging a panel.  

How much materials does it take to build the hull of the Great Alaskan out to 28'?  Well, check the photos out!

I got nearly all of my materials from the nice folks at Boat Builder Central in Vero Beach, Florida.  Joel Shine is a very nice person and gave me a lot of tips.  He was in the process of building some very cool stuff.  He was working on an 18 foot skiff that I was eyeballing pretty hard, and will probably build oneday!  Also, the prices on all their materials were as good or better than anywhere on the net.  I would highly recommend giving them a call if you need boatbuilding materials. The rest of the fiberglass materials that BoatBuilderCentral did not have I got from US Composites in West Palm Beach.  Once again, the prices and customer service were top notch. I spoke with Lisa on the phone and she was very helpful.

I got 17 sheets of 3/8" Meranti 1088, 11 Sheets of 3/4" Meranti 1088 and 1 sheet of 1/2" Meranti 1088.  30 Gallons of MarinEpoxy with the slow hardener.  Lots of fiberglass tape and cloth, and bags and bags of wood flour, silica, glass beads, phenolic microballons and glass minifibers.

I also got a little ahead of myself the other day, and went ahead built my 32 gallon livewell first.  Hey, it just seemed like the right thing.  I made a mold out of some scrap lumber and formica and started fiberglassing over it.  Once it got thick enough, I popped it out of the mold and put light blue gelcoat all over the inside.  Why light blue?  Because I always wanted a light blue livewell.  I think it will keep the live bait happier.

Also, last week at a heavily reduced price, I bought a brand new aluminum outboard bracket with swim platform.  I want the boat to have a full closed transom.  This bracket is made by Stainless Marine.  The outboard motor setback is 30 inches, and the swim platform is around 77 inches wide.  It came with all the mounting hardware and is ready to go.

Yesterday I put the cover on the top of my temporary garage.  It is a 30x40 white tarp.  Needless to say it was not fun at all to put it on, and without help from my wife and kids, I would have never got it on.  Now it looks like we could hold a circus in the backyard!  I will have to get a picture of that when I get a chance.

Finally, today, I went back to the same place I got the outboard bracket and got virtually everything I need, as far as hardware, for the boat build.  (practically everything except the motor and trailer!)

I got a hydraulic steering system, trim tabs, anchor windlass (no more pulling up the anchor by hand!), Sony radio, JBL speakers, cup holders, rod holders, anchor, anchor roller, electrical switch panels, bilge pump, livewell pump, fuel line, LED nav and anchor lights, LED courtesy lights, battery terminals, battery switches, hatch covers, swim ladder......the list goes on and on!  Here are some pictures of just some of the loot.

From Lowes, I ordered my 24 foot laminated veneer lumber beams for my stringers, and they are going to deliver them this Saturday.  This week I am going on a business trip and I am going to re-read the construction books and study the plans again this week.  When I get back, it will be time to start cutting some wood.....

If someone is interested in seeing "roughly" how this boat is going to be built, here is a link to a site detailing the build process of a very similar boat:

http://www.kbeddoeboats.com/home.html

Also, this is the site of the boat designer for the boat I am going to build:

http://www.glacierboats.com/

Intro to building the 28 Foot Great Alaskan Boat

I have owned several boats over the years, with my first being a 21 foot Hydrasport Hydraskiff bay boat.  This was a great boat.  I caught a lot of fish over the years in it.  It had a 150hp Evinrude Ocean Runner motor, and I never had a lick of trouble out of any part of the boat.  But the boat had a tunnel hull, and boy did it pound!

My next boat was a 21 foot Nauticstar bay boat.  This was a sexy fishing machine with a 150 HP Yamaha four stroke.  A little underpowered, and the wiring was terrible on the boat.  Customer service was great, but I got tired of fixing broken things.  Then I started to get the offshore fishing bug!  This is a dangerous and expensive illness that strikes many fisherman.  Try to avoid this at all costs, but if you can't, like I couldn't...break out the checkbook.

Next up was a 22 foot Sea Hunt Triton Center Console with a Yamaha 250 Four stroke.  This boat caught a lot of fish and the quality was pretty good.  Wiring was not the worst I had ever seen, but still not top notch.  The biggest problem I started to realize, was that none of these boats had any real shade or protection from the elements.  Being a fair skinned fisherman living in Florida, I already get pre-cancerous lesions burned off my head and neck every year at the dermatologist.  When you are out on the open ocean, there is very little shade on a boat with a T-Top.  Basically between 11:26am and 12:43pm, if you stand directly under the T-Top you get some shade from the direct sun, however, you still get 100% of the reflected UV from the water.  When the weather kicks up a little, you end up taking 5 gallon buckets of seawater to the face every 10 seconds, your back is killing you and it ends up not very fun sometimes. Plus, behind the leaning post was so little fishing room is was ridiculous.  They design these boats to ride fast, not fish efficiently.

Well, I decided I needed a boat with more protection from the elements, a comfortable place to drive and relax, but still have a giant fishing area.  I started looking at 25-28 foot pilothouse style boats.  These boats from Parker, Judge, Steiger Craft and a few others are magnificent boats.  However, they run nearly $100, 000 new, and they will use around $200-300 in fuel each trip.  This on top of the boat payment, fuel bill for the tow vehicle (or maybe a new diesel tow vehicle), or perhaps even dry rack storage made me realize that I could not afford to boat like this.......very sad....

I really loved these boats above, but they are just out of my price range!

Then a post on TheHullTruth.com, basically asking for help in my boating dilemma (champagne boat on light beer budget) led an individual user named Pfithian mentioned to build a Tolman Jumbo.  I had NO IDEA what he was talking about, so I started looking around and realized, OMG, you can actually build a boat!  Then I stumbled upon Brian Dixon's site with the Great Alaskan boat, and I was sold.

I mean, imagine having a 28 foot boat, built exactly the way you want.  The boat weighing half or less of any of the other boats you had looked at, and getting upwards or 4 times better fuel mileage.  Getting twice the gas mileage towing it down the road.  And best of all, building it complete for about 1/4 the price of getting one of the other new factory boats.  Sounds to good to be true, I know.

So I told my family and friends, and they quickly laughed me out of the house, calling me Noah.  Someone told me "You cannot build a boat out of wood for the ocean", and I told him " I am glad no one told Christopher Columbus that!"  

So here I am....I have gotten my building area nearly ready, got my workshop setup, bought all my materials for the hull, and I am ready to go.  Let's see how this adventure turns out.

Picture of the Great Alaskan 28 Foot.  I bought a complete set of plans and comprehensive building manual from www.glacierboats.com :