Posts Tagged ‘wooden boats’

John Spencer’s & Peter Tait’s FIREBUG

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Continuing on the theme of last week’s entry (small wooden boats suitable for Family BoatBuilding), this week we look at the 8′ FIREBUG, designer by John Spencer and Peter Tait.

Firebugs

Firebugs, courtesy Peter Tait

According to Peter, they’ve sold almost 1,000 plans so far.  There is very active racing of the ‘bugs in New Zealand and Australia… and growing in other countries as well.

Peter had hoped to participate in Family BoatBuilding at the WoodenBoat Show this year, but has elected to shoot for 2011 instead.  That’ll give him time to set up the long-distance CNC routines.

More Firebug

More Firebug

From the website:

“The ‘Firebug’ is a 2.4 metre (8 foot) sailboat, a trainer yacht for learning, for club sailing or racing or simply a family fun boat, for holidays at the beach or take it camping. It’s fun to build and fun to sail especially if you have built it yourself.

It’s a Real Boat

This is not a knock-it-up-in-a-weekend throwaway boat - it’s a real boat, light but strong, nice to sail or race and just right for learning boat building and sailing skills.

Build it yourself

Construction is from timber and plywood. You make up the pieces then assemble them on a building frame. Full sized patterns make marking out simple. There is no difficult bending or complicated shapes.

Gain new skills

The Firebug has been designed for the novice builder as well as the experienced. The building technique is optimised to be as foolproof as possible - the step by step construction system is self checking as work progresses. After enjoying building your Firebug your new skills may let you take on a larger project, a bigger boat (how about a live aboard yacht for a Pacific cruise!) or at least do those jobs around the home with new confidence.

It’s popular

With plans in 29 countries and hundreds of boats built already the Firebug is attracting a lot of interest. As one builder said, “At last I have found the design I have been looking for! Great, I can’t wait to get started!”"

See the Firebug for yourself.  The website is here:  http://www.firebug.co.nz/index.html
More Firebug

More Firebug

Mushulu 14 — Timber Tinnies ™

Monday, March 1st, 2010

For those of us in North America, we frequently bemoan the lack of a good wooden fishing boat kit.  I’m sure there are some out there, but we’re always on the lookout for others.

Clint Chase and I were discussing it Monday morning, and I pointed him to this:

Mushulu 14, Courtesy of Denman Marine

Mushulu 14, Courtesy of Denman Marine

OK, it’s not readily apparent that she has an attractive shear.. but she truly does.

It’s always nice to find a stitch-and-glue design, and this seems well designed for her purpose.

Let’s hear a few words from Denman Marine’s Mark Denman:

“Aluminum tinnies have been the mainstay of Australian recreational fishing for many years.  However over the years, the boats have grown larger, fancier and heavier , requiring more and more horsepower to push them along.  Whilst some people are quite adept at welding aluminium and making, modifying and repairing their own tinnie, the average punter has to pay a qualified welder for all these services.

The cost of a decent, well made tinnie (few and far between these days) has to many people, become a barrier to having a new boat.  Normally the “package” price still requires many thousands of dollars in extra bits and pieces and dealer charges.  A number of the popular manufacturers are selling their 14’ hulls for anywhere between $8-11,000.”  [Those are Australian dollars.  Today's exchange rate is one Australian dollar = .89 US $.]

“The design of many of these boats also is left wanting.  I have heard of special hull shapes slamming, welds cracking first time out and paint falling off when the boat is washed which is all very disappointing when a bunch of your hard earned has been spent on a “quality” product.

I am not saying that there aren’t high quality tinnies out there but they are generally from smaller custom builders whose prices for a 14’ are beyond the reach of most folk.”

Here’s what Mushula looks like in construction:

Mushulu 14 Looking Pretty

Mushulu 14 Looking Pretty

I always have a soft spot for any boat design or boat that comes out of Tasmania.  Now, Andrew Denman will finish Mushulu 14’s design brief:

“As Australians, we love building wooden boats.  Wooden runabouts were very popular before aluminium came on the scene but were dumped as people wanted the new shiny so called “maintenance free” boats.  With the advent of high quality marine plywood, modern fiberglass cloths and epoxy resins, timber runabouts or let’s call them Timber Tinnies™ have become a perfect low cost DIY alternative to the aluminium crowd.  Build them yourself, customize them and repair them yourself with minimal skill and tools required.

My company, Denman Marine has partnered with Queensland Naval Architect Mark Bowdidge of Bowdidge Marine Designs (BMD) to bring out a range of fishing/power boats in kit form for home builders.  

Denman Marine will be CNC cutting kits for Mark’s designs and the first design that we have developed for kit production is Mark’s well known Mushulu 14  with his other designs to be developed over the coming months. We have also asked Mark to design a larger 16’ dedicated sports fishing boat similar to those models popular in the Top End which will be in kit form also.

As a professional boat builder, I have always been very skeptical about claims of kit boat producers but I must admit, I was absolutely amazed at how quickly the M14 went together and how fair the hull was.  

Construction is stitch and glue utilising high quality epoxy resins (we use and recommend WEST System) and Mark has designed a CNC cut building jig that took no more than 5 minutes to set up.   The jig has male molds to help form the shape when stitching up and a set of female molds to hold the boat level when working on the interior.   

The total time to separate all the components from the sheets, join the hull/bottom panels (no scarfing required) set up the building jig, laminate transom and stitch the boat together ready for filleting and glassing was just over 6 hours.”

If you live in Australia, the cost for the Mushulu 14 kit is — get this: AUS$2,499.  How can anyone afford NOT to have one?

Please check out Denman Marine’s website:

http://www.denmanmarine.com.au/id74.html

I’ll be on vacation for the next 10 days or so, so please email me (carl@woodenboat.com) details of any boat finds you think would be appropriate for “My Wooden Boat of the Week.”  I’ll post here again on March 23.

And please click on “Comment” below to comment on the Mushulu 14, or any of my past posts.