Many people prefer to have a personal watercraft. Since branded ones cost quite a lot, home-made boats from plywood can be an excellent way out.
On the ship, which will be discussed, three people can comfortably accommodate, moreover, its weight is small, like a conventional kayak. It is suitable for fishing, and for walking with friends or family. If necessary, the boat can be equipped with a motor or sail.
Plywood is a durable material, so home-made motor boats made from it can be accelerated to very decent speeds, while being stable and safe.
Future boat options
The vessel under consideration will have 4,500 mm in length, its width is 1,050 mm, and its depth is 400 mm. Such parameters make it possible to use the boat universally.
Material for manufacturing
To make the case durable and easily withstand loads, it is better to choose a three-layer plywood that does not have knots, with a thickness of sheets from 4 to 5 mm, and always impregnated with glue on a resin base. Such material makes excellent home-made wooden boats.
Plywood is used everywhere in shipbuilding. Indeed, from thin layers of plywood connected by resin glue, a very strong veneer is obtained, which is able to withstand huge loads.
What a boat consists of
The main element of the whole structure is the keel. It is like a ridge of a boat and a stem is attached to it on one side, which forms the bow, and on the other hand, an stem, forming a stern. These structural elements are responsible for the longitudinal stiffness of the vessel, for ensuring that the home-made motor boat made of plywood is durable.
Cross stiffness is provided by frames. Their lower part, which will become the bottom, is called flortimbers, and the two upper side parts are called futoxes.
When all the elements are assembled and securely fastened, the frame is lined with plywood. After that, in order to make the structure more rigid, the top of the pivots, as well as the frames, are fixed with boards - sides.
To cover the case with plywood, you need to use solid sheets, which will completely cover the necessary plane. The only way homemade boats and boats will have a minimum number of seams. The plywood of the casing lies on the frame, forming smooth transitions of lines and creating a streamlined shape of the boat. There is a minimal kink in the waterline only on frames 2 and 4.
Materials for building a boat
- Plywood 3 sheets 1500x1500 mm.
- Boards - pine 3 pieces 6.5 m long and 15 mm thick.
- Two boards for keel and false keels, the length of which is 6.5 m, thickness 25 mm.
- One board for the manufacture of a feed oar, the length of which is 2 m.
- A board with a thickness of 40 mm and a length of 6.5 m (for the manufacture of frames).
- Two boards for oars and pins, length 2 m, thickness 55 mm.
- Lightweight fabric 10 m, which will cover the body.
- 1 kg of slaked lime.
- 7 kg of wood resin.
- 4 kg of natural drying oil.
- 2 kg of oil paint.
- Nails 75, 50, 30 and 20 millimeters long.
- Oars for oars with bolts and mounts.
We make parts
We create frames, they need to be drawn on plywood. To make everything perfectly smooth, use graph paper. A boat is being made with its own hands according to the drawings that will be presented here. Let's start with the first one.
The first step is to draw a vertical axis or a diametrical plane - DP. Then horizontal lines are drawn so that the DP divided them in half. There should be nine pieces, and the distance between them is 5 centimeters. Then marks are put on these horizontal lines along which the bends of the boat itself will be created. It is better to make them with the help of a metal ruler, bending it along the marks. So made boat with your own hands will have perfect shape.
Now create the inner contour. Two more are drawn from the lower horizontal line upward, parallel to it are straight lines at a distance of 60 and 75 mm. After that, 130 mm are measured from the external bend to the axis on the frames No. 2, 3 and 4. And on frames No. 1 and 5 in the same places they lay 100 mm each, because they are extreme and go on narrowing. Thus, we draw the inner tide point on the filtimbers, after which we draw a line from it to its upper cut.
Building the inner contour of the futoxes
From the outside, 40 mm is deposited inward, along the entire length. And where flortimbers joins the futox, you need to do a little wider so that the design is reliable. Thanks to this element, home-made motor boats have the necessary margin of safety.
When everything is done, the drawing must be checked by bending it along the center line. If all the contours match - good. So, you can make patterns of cardboard for further transfer of the image to wooden blanks. In case there are inaccuracies, you can use the half, which is ideal, and make patterns on it, attaching first with one side, and then the other. The drawings should have perfect symmetry, otherwise home-made boats made of plywood will not turn out to be strong and stable on water.
How to transfer an image from templates to a tree
When the templates are ready, put them on a board 40 mm thick. The location should be in the direction of the wood fibers, you need to calculate everything so that they are cut as little as possible.
When plotting templates and sawing out futoxes on them, you should leave a margin, making them slightly longer than the planned sizes. When making homemade boats from plywood, make drawings in good faith, taking into account all the nuances! The presented drawings will help you with this. Pay attention to a certain margin in the side view drawing, as well as in the illustration of the frame, which is shown a little higher. Such a reserve will allow to avoid mistakes in the assembly of the boat frame.
When the flortimbers and futoxes are ready, they are put on the drawing to mark all the overlaps in the joints. You need to mark everything with a margin of a millimeter. This is done so that in the process of fitting the parts can be more carefully connected.
When everything fits perfectly, you can fix the connection with nails. They must pierce both sides of the frame through. Left sharp end bend or rivet. Thus, your homemade plywood boats will be even more durable!
Since the casing is nailed to futox No. 2 and 4, they should be made 40 mm thick, and for the rest you can take thinner boards - 30 mm.
Stem Material
If you want to make a good and durable stem, take oak or elm for its manufacture. It is desirable that the workpiece has a bend in the form of a stem. If it cannot be found, then it is made of two parts, as shown in the figure. First, its shape is sawn, and then the edges of the side edges are machined at an angle of 25 degrees to the axis of the boat. Before you make a boat, you need to study in detail the drawings of boats of the same design.
Make keel
We need to take a board with a thickness of 25 mm and a length of 3.5 m. Two lines are drawn on its surface, the distance between which is 70 mm. The future keel is made on them.
Side boards
Two boards are trimmed to get perfectly even boards with a width of 150 mm and a length of 5 m.
Transom
The rear wall of the stern, where the motor is mounted, is called a transom. It is made from a board 25 mm thick. A bar is nailed to it for greater strength of the ship's frame.
Boat frame
Home - made plywood boats are assembled on a workbench, where the keel is installed. To it, on the one hand, the stinger and the transom fixed on it are attached, and on the other, the stems. The remaining parts of the hull, such as pins and frames, are connected using small nails, screws, rivets, in a word, so that, according to the master, it will be more reliable to hold.
Everything is checked in detail to exclude skewing of the frame. It is especially necessary to ensure that the pin and transom are in line with the axis. This is very easy to check: from above, they attach a tightness to the rope and see that this line fits perfectly with the axis of the boat. Before creating a vessel, it is advisable to look at home-made plywood boats of various designs, the drawings of which are widely represented in ship-made magazines.
All joints must be laid with a cloth impregnated with resin. Fastenings with a fabric are connected with nails. They drive them in so that they come out on the other side by five millimeters.
The frames are fixed to the keel. Grooves are made on them, in which the keel is firmly fixed. Cut them half a millimeter smaller than necessary, so that in the case of a bevel it was possible to correct everything. In general, when making home-made boats and boats, it is worthwhile to leave gaps in all joints in order to customize the parts already on the assembled frame for its ideal shape. And after that, all connections are firmly fixed with nails, as described above.
Plywood boat sheathing
For sheathing, the boat is turned over and marked with frames. That is, they smooth their surface so that the plywood fits perfectly. To do this, take a metal ruler or something even and elastic and apply it to the surface of the frame. So it will be perfectly visible where you need to shoot the material.
In order for the plywood to bend well, it is steamed. It is necessary to pour water into the trough and start a fire under it. A plywood sheet is placed on top. Water steals it, and it becomes more malleable. There is no ideal pattern by which the skin can be cut, although many boat designs represent them. In any case, these are only approximate forms, because everything is customized individually.
The fibers of the outer layers of plywood should go along the hull of the boat, so it will be much more durable in operation and will not burst when sheathing.
Putty and paint
For greater strength and to prevent leakage, the boat must be covered with cloth. For this, a cover is sewn, which will cover it to the sides. After that, false keels are made to install them on the outside of the bottom of the vessel. Holes are drilled in the frames of the falsifications for their further fastening.
After that make putty for the boat. Take the lime sifted through a sieve, pour the resin into it, mix thoroughly until it begins to resemble batter in consistency. Then they make a spatula and putty the entire hull of the boat.
Further, the hull is coated twice with hot resin to the sides. On a damp coating, put on a previously prepared fabric cover. It must be crimped thoroughly for tight bonding. All folds are well leveled. After the prepared false nails are beaten, and on top the already fully assembled boat is coated with resin in three layers. Then it is turned upside down with a keel, all unnecessary gaps are sawn off and auxiliary parts are removed, linings are coated with two layers with a gap of 35 hours. And then they paint and decorate at will, like other home-made boats, photos of which can be seen in magazines or in this article.
Vessel Registration
Registration of a homemade boat is made by contacting the GIMS. There you should write a statement stating the type of the planned vessel, passport details, place of residence and telephone. It is also necessary to attach the drawings of the vessel from all projections, indicate all the places where the mechanical parts will be installed, in general, all information relating to the product. In addition, you need to attach receipts of purchased materials for the construction of the boat. Only after consideration of the project by the commission, a decision will be made on the registration of your homemade craft.