Craig Bjarnason built an 8‘ dinghy. It is a cold molded, cedar hull with mahogany keelson seats and transom. All the laminating was done with thickened WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy. The hull was sheathed with 6 oz. fiberglass/epoxy on the outside and was epoxy coated on the inside. This boat is used as a tender for our 34‘ cold molded cutter on Lake of the Woods (Kenora, Ontario). It was also built using WEST SYSTEM Epoxy.
Take a look at some of the other awesome Readers’ Projects our fans sent in!
Jacques Coon’s Drift Boat Build By Josh Coon
After seeing the clean lines and flowing curves of a Jason Cajune drift boat near Yellowstone River in the summer of 2018, Jacques Coon excitedly agreed to lead a build six months into the pandemic lockdown with his son and grandson. Read on and drift away...
By Lorraine Duckworth – ATL Composites
Located on the banks of the picturesque Huon River at Franklin, Tasmania, The Wooden Boat Centre is Australia’s only wooden boat building school, creating original masterpieces and restoring heritage vessels while mentoring students from all walks of life.
For the past 30 years, the Wooden Boat Centre has been dedicated to keeping the tradition of hand-made boats alive. Their one year shipwright course, and a variety of shorter courses, give students hands-on experience in both traditional and modern boat building techniques.
Before jumping into building a strip kayak, I wanted to find out all I could about the process. To begin, I read the book Kayakcraft: Fine Woodstrip Kayak Construction by Ted Moores cover-to-cover and referred to it frequently during construction.
I’ve always wondered if LuLu wasn’t the largest trailer sailer on record. I’ve been sailing this 35′, self-designed and homebuilt trailerable sailer since launching her out of Morro Bay, California in 2010. I laid the keel in 1993 after three years of testing on a half-scale model I’d built. Her construction consists of ¾” planks bent over bulkheads on a strongback and closely fitted, layered joints held together with a lot of West System® Epoxy. I also used West System® when I sheathed her with fiberglass. Continue reading
I was anxious the first time I took my handcrafted McKenzie-style drift boat to The Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington. Realizing that boat builders and woodworkers with discerning eyes would be inspecting the construction details of my boat over the course of four days was almost reason enough for me to create a “change of plans” and not go. Continue reading
Cover Photo: Joshua and his Minimax Hydroplane
In late 2018, my son and I were given a unique opportunity by the Michigan-based Water Wonderland Chapter of the Antique and Classic Boat Society (ACBS) to build an 8′ MiniMax hydroplane based on original plans from the early 1960s. Almost anything from that era seems to be popular again. Maybe it’s nostalgia or maybe the designs of that groundbreaking decade were just ahead of their time. Either way, the MiniMax’s appeal seems as relevant today as it did in 1962. We accepted the challenge without hesitation. Continue reading
Small communities benefit when local groups work together to produce results greater than the sum of their individual efforts. Three organizations combined their efforts to create such synergy in a coastal county on Lake Huron. The Iosco County Family Court, local Elks Lodge 2525 and Heritage Coast Sailing and Rowing (HCS&R) combined efforts to develop a positive training program for youthful offenders and provide a staunch safety boat for the new not-for-profit sailing school. Continue reading
In Epoxyworks 47 we featured an article on the construction of Italmas. Today she’s nearly complete, and true to reputation, Van Dam Custom Boatworks never disappoints. Here are a few photos of the boat showing off some of the craftsmanship Van Dam is famous for. Continue reading