Many people prefer to have a personal watercraft. Since branded boats are quite expensive, homemade plywood boats can be a great way out.
The boat in question can accommodate three people comfortably and is as light as a normal kayak. It is suitable for both fishing and walking with friends or family. If necessary, the boat can be equipped with a motor or a sail.
Plywood is a durable material, so homemade motor boats made from it can accelerate to very decent speeds, while being stable and safe.
Parameters of the future boat
The craft in question will be 4.500 mm long, 1050 mm wide and 400 mm deep. Such parameters allow the boat to be used universally.
Material for making
To make the case strong and easily withstand loads, it is better to choose a three-layer plywood that does not have knots, with a sheet thickness of 4 to 5 mm, and be sure toimpregnated with resin based adhesive. This material makes excellent homemade wooden boats.
Plywood is widely used in shipbuilding. Indeed, from thin layers of plywood, connected with resin glue, a very durable veneer is obtained that can withstand enormous loads.
What the boat is made of
The main element of the whole structure is the keel. It is like the backbone of a boat and a stem is attached to it on one side, which forms the bow, and on the other hand, a stern, which forms the stern. These structural elements are responsible for the longitudinal rigidity of the vessel, for ensuring that a home-made plywood motor boat is strong.
Transverse rigidity is provided by frames. Their lower part, which will become the bottom, is called floortimbers, and the two upper side parts are called futoks.
When all the elements are assembled and securely fastened, the frame is sheathed with plywood. After that, to make the structure more rigid, the top of the stems, as well as the frames, are fixed with boards - sides.
For sheathing the body with plywood, you need to use solid sheets that will completely cover the required plane. This is the only way homemade boats and boats will have a minimum number of seams. Sheathing plywood lies on the frame, forming smooth transitions of lines and creating a streamlined shape of the boat. There is a minimal break 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 keel boardsand fakes, the length of which is 6.5 m and the thickness is 25 mm.
- One board for making a stern paddle, 2m long.
- A board with a thickness of 40 mm and a length of 6.5 m (for making frames).
- Two boards for oars and stems, 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 natural drying oil.
- 2 kg of oil paint.
- Nails 75, 50, 30 and 20 mm long.
- Oarlocks for oars with bolts and fasteners.
Making Parts
Create frames, they need to be drawn on plywood. To make everything perfectly even, use graph paper. A boat is made with their own hands according to the drawings that will be presented here. Let's start with the first one.
First of all, you need to draw a vertical axis or a diametrical plane - DP. Then horizontal lines are drawn so that the DP bisects them. There should be nine of them, and the distance between them is 5 centimeters. Then, marks are placed on these horizontal lines, along which they will create the bends of the boat itself. It is better to make them with a metal ruler, bending it along the marks. So a boat made with your own hands will have perfect outlines.
Now create the inner contour. From the lower horizontal line, two more straight lines parallel to it are drawn upwards at a distance of 60 and 75 mm. After that, 130 mm is measured from the outer bend to the axis on frames No. 2, 3 and 4. And onframes No. 1 and 5 in the same places are set aside by 100 mm, because they are extreme and go to a narrowing. Thus, we draw the inner point of the tide on the floor timber, after which we draw a line down from it to its upper cut.
Building the inner contour of the footox
From the outer part, 40 mm is deposited inward, along the entire length. And where the floortimbers join the futoxes, you need to make it a little wider so that the construction is reliable. Thanks to this element, homemade motor boats have the necessary margin of safety.
When everything is done, the drawing needs to be checked by bending it along the centerline. If all the contours match - good. This means that you can make patterns from cardboard for further transferring the image to wooden blanks. In the case when there are inaccuracies, you can use the half, which is ideal, and make patterns on it, first applying one side and then the other. There must be perfect symmetry in the drawings, otherwise homemade plywood boats will not turn out strong and stable on the water.
How to transfer an image from templates to wood
When the templates are ready, put them on a board with a thickness of 40 mm. 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 drawing templates and sawing futoxes out of them, it is worth leaving a margin, making them a little longer than the planned sizes. Making homemade plywood boats, make drawingsconscientiously, considering all the nuances! The presented drawings will help you with this. Pay attention to some margin in the side view drawing, as well as in the illustration of the frame, which is shown a little higher. Such a margin will avoid mistakes when assembling the boat frame.
When the floortimbers and futoxes are ready, they are placed 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 together perfectly, you can fasten the connection with nails. They must pierce through both parts of the frame. Bend or rivet the sharp end that came out. This way, your homemade plywood boats will be even more durable!
Since the boarding is nailed to the futoxes 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 strong stem, take oak or elm for its manufacture. It is desirable that the workpiece has a bend in the shape of the stem. If it cannot be found, then it is made of two parts, as shown in the figure. First, its shape is cut out, and then the edges of the side edges are turned at an angle of 25 degrees to the axis of the boat. Before making a boat, you need to study in detail the drawings of boats of the same design.
Making the keel
You need to take a board, the thickness of which is 25 mm, and the length is 3.5 m.two lines are drawn on the surface, the distance between which is 70 mm. They are used to make the future keel.
Side boards
Two boards are cut to make perfectly even boards 150 mm wide and 5 m long.
Transom
The rear wall of the stern, where the motor is attached, is called the transom. It is made from a board 25 mm thick. A bar is nailed to it from above for greater strength of the frame of the vessel.
Boat frame
Homemade plywood boats are assembled on a workbench where the keel is set. On one side, a sternpost and a transom fixed on it are attached to it, and on the other, a stem. The remaining parts of the boat hull, such as stems and frames, are connected with small nails, screws, rivets, in a word, with what, according to the master, it will be more reliable to hold.
Everything is checked in detail to exclude distortions of the frame. It is especially necessary to ensure that the stem and transom are in line with the axis. It is very easy to check this: they fix a tight rope on top of them and make sure that this line fits perfectly with the axis of the boat. Before creating a ship, it is advisable to look at home-made plywood boats of various designs, the drawings of which are widely presented in ship modeling magazines.
All connections must be lined with resin impregnated cloth. Fasteners with fabric are connected with nails. They are driven in so that they come out on the other side by five millimeters.
Frames are attached to the keel. They make grooves in which the keel is tightly fixed. They are cut out half a millimeter smaller than necessary, so that in case of a bevel there is an opportunity to correct everything. In general, when making home-made boats and boats, it is worth leaving gaps in all joints in order to adjust the parts already on the assembled frame for its ideal shape. And after that, all connections are firmly fixed with nails, as described above.
Sheathing the boat with plywood
For sheathing, the boat is turned over and the frames are reduced. That is, their surface is leveled 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.
To make the plywood bend well, it is steamed. It is necessary to pour water into the trough and light a fire under it. A sheet of plywood is placed on top. Water steams it, and it becomes more pliable. There is no ideal pattern for cutting out the skin, although many boat drawings 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 stronger in operation and will not burst during sheathing.
Putting and painting
For greater strength and to prevent leakage, the boat must be covered with fabric. To do this, a cover is sewn that will cover it to the sides. After that, fakes are made to install them on the outside of the bottom of the vessel. Holes are drilled in the false frames for their further fastening.
After that, putty is made forboats. They take lime sifted through a sieve, pour resin into it, stir thoroughly until it resembles batter in consistency. Then they make a spatula and putty the entire hull of the boat.
Further, the hull to the sides is covered twice with hot resin. A previously prepared fabric cover is put on the wet coating. It must be carefully compressed for tight bonding. All folds are well leveled. After that, prepared false keels are nailed and the already fully assembled boat is covered with resin in three layers on top. Then it is turned over with the keel down, all unnecessary gaps are sawn off and auxiliary parts are taken out, covered with two layers of drying oil with a gap of 35 hours. And then they paint and decorate as desired, like other homemade boats, photos of which can be seen in magazines or in this article.
Vessel registration
Registration of a home-made boat is made by contacting the GIMS. There you should write a statement indicating the type of planned vessel, passport details, place of residence and telephone number. It is also necessary to attach drawings of the vessel from all projections, indicate all the places where the mechanical parts will be installed, in general, all information related to the product. In addition, you need to attach checks of purchased materials for building a boat. Only after consideration of the project by the commission, a decision will be made on the registration of your home-made watercraft.
