Thursday, August 24, 2017

One Sheet, One Weekend, One Boat

The concept of a one sheet boat has been around for a while. I saw it as a challenge in time as well as space. Work is doing summer hours right now, so I took off Friday afternoon and went out for supplies.

It's pre-boat, and this is it!
I really liked the idea of the One Sheet+ plans from Ken Simpson so I bought them. The BOM called for a single sheet of 1/4" plywood, a 2'x4' section of 1/2" plywood, and 5 1x2 furring strips. The furring strips came bundled as 6, so I figured I could use the extra one to cut some chines. This was laid out so I was ready to roll on Saturday morning!


Starting to cut up
I didn't follow the plans exactly. They call for tape & glue construction, with no screws at all until you add the skids to the bottom. I couldn't make that work, so I decided to cut some chines. It looked like there would be plenty of scrap furring strips so I decided to cut first and chine later.

First I cut out the split parts from the 1/2" plywood. They go back to back to get the same angle cut into the sides, and that helps you line up everything else. Then the plans had you start cutting at one end of the full sheet of plywood and eventually spec down to the other end. Cut then assemble, then cut more to spec then assemble again. I decided to cut as much as I could first, then assemble as I could. Mostly this gave me the flexibility to measure the gunwales out of the 1x2, then use the scraps from those boards to cut chines and assemble with screws.

Problem #2 was that I didn't have screws that were the right size to go through the 1/2" plywood! oops. I used a 3/4" flat head screw setup for most of it. But then I had to make a return trip to Lowe's to get some 1" screws, d'oh!

Rough cut is done, time to start assembly

Hot in the workshop today

Assembled the front half with a spacer installed

detail on the stem
The plans actually did not call for a stem but I wanted to add one anyway. I've been reading about stem construction from lofting lately and wanted to try those same techniques on my experimental boat here. It's a straight stem, so I marked out the rabbet, apex, and bearding lines and cut it out on the table saw. Then test fit with the cut plywood sides and finally cut out the bearding angle onto the front. This was a really nice detail when it came together and the one part of the project that I'm actually pretty proud of. And nobody can see it in the final product. ha!

the back half

Now it's starting to look like a boat
ah, it's more boat than plywood now! With no bottoms yet, you can see the basic shape of how the boat comes together. This is a nesting plan, so the front half is supposed to fit inside of the back half. That means you have to build the front & back separately. At this point, I was able to measure & cut the 1x2's for the rubrails (gunwales) meant for the outside top of the boat - creating scraps that I needed for assembly!

I already had one extra furring strip, figured I would use that for the chine rails to attach the bottoms. I started by ripping it in half, getting two strips that were 3/4" square. Then with that same setup on the table saw I ripped three of the scraps in half to use for the corners. I needed three strips at least 11" long, then ripped in half to make 3/4" square strips for the vertical corners in the back/back, front/back, and back/front of the sections. The stem already took care of the front/front.

I used Titebond III this time because it is totally waterproof, that's what the plans suggested. Glue & screw the plywood into the chines, keep those joints nice and tight. Then it's time to cut the bottoms to spec by tracing them out from the assemblies.

The front has a bottom

It turned out some nice clean lines

The Back got a bottom too

Happy boat builder
And that all happened on 8/5/17. That is one solid day of boatbuilding!! I started out buying supplies on Friday and ended up with fully formed boat parts on Saturday. They might even float in this condition. I've got roughly $38 invested in this project so far, and still have plenty of woodworking to go on Sunday.

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