Oughtred - MacGregor Canoe

Some pictures of the launch. Should have some better ones on a couple of weeks -

cheers, Mark Rainbird

CLC

Just thought I'd send a couple of pics of my finished kayak, thanks for all your help. Hopefully in a few months I will be starting to build a sister ship.

Brenton McNair

Welsford - Joansa

Cliff and Louise Lawson knoked out this beautiful example of John Welsford's Joansa in record time.

The Joansa is a 15'6" (4.6m) rowboats based on the American Chamberlain Dory Skiffs of the late 1800s. A popular rowboat.

Oughtred - Fulmar

Iain Oughtred's boats are incredible and I'm having a great time building his Fulmar design. His plans are very detailed and along with his boat building manual provide plenty of information.

Construction began in February 2002 and progress has been slow but I'm savoring every step. I probably spend more time sipping cold beer and staring at the boat (contemplating the next step and admiring the lines) than I do actually working on it. At this point the hull exterior is complete and the boat is ready to flip over. No projected launch date as of yet.

There's still a lot of work (and cold beer) left.

Lee Wince
Dallas, Texas

Oughtred - MacGregor Canoe

I started the project in about August or September last year (2005) with the aim of finishing it for the summer. It's still not finished but is really close now. The main problems were trying to build it outside during the winter and living in the Adelaide Hills. At one stage I had three large tarps slung over the whole area and two very powerful arc lamps providing light and heat. For much of the time it was blowing a gale, pouring with rain or hailing - the neighbours thought it was hilarious. But when a job needs doing you just have to get on with it.

The first picture is of the planking complete just waiting for a break in the weather so that I could paint the hull. The second the hull primed and waiting to be turned (around January 2006). Third picture is of the deck beams, bulkheads and floor beams in place. Fourth is of the hull complete with a couple of coats of varnish. The final picture is of the boat with sail up just waiting for either the tide to come in or some heavy rain!

Just need to fit the rudder, rig the sail and find a boat trailer to carry it. I think I was a bit overly optimistic in thinking I could carry the canoe on a roof rack on top of a small Mk1 VW Golf. Thanks guys for all your excellent advice over the past year - couldn't have done it without you.

Mark Rainbird

Oughtred - Whilly Tern

Thought you might like to see the progress of the Whilly Tern.

Estimated date of completion - August.
1. Scarfing Jig - Can't use it for the garboard strake (too wide) but it was fast and effective for the others.
2. Planking complete and ready to sand.
3. Glueing one of the laminations for the forward inwale. Are there ever enough clamps? 4. Wasn't happy with the amount of lead, so I added more. Two diver's weights worth!
5. Insides primed and ready for the fore and aft compartments to be sheeted over and side benches to be fitted. The thwart, seat and mast partner are just placed in position. These will be bolted/screwed rather than glued, to make repainting and varnishing easier in future.
6. I've used Tassie Oak for the seat, thwart, side benches and mast partner, with a contrasting strip of nyatoh in the seat.

Cheers
Ian Pavey

CLC 16

Finally finished and launched my 16footer at Careel Bay on Good Friday.
Very stable, paddles straight and fast.

Thanks for the plans.

Tim Disher

Oughtred - Eun Mara

We turned over the hull of my Eun Mara last Saturday, 18th March 2006. We had about 20 people here, and the job took 20 minutes. I had it all ready, and we just rolled the hull over onto piles of old tyres, and then carried it back onto the building frame with more old tyres in strategic places, after I had removed the posts that had supported the moulds. (Moulds 3,5 and 7 were still in the boat at that stage.) Then we had a bit of a party.

I leveled it up later, with tackles from the ceiling beams. I had first put pencil to plywood, to make the moulds, on 8th April 2005, so I am pleased to have turned it over within a year. Here are some photographs. The real boat will probably have a grey painted deck. The cabin-roof of the model is just a piece of cardboard so far. I painted the hull while the rudder fittings were being made locally, according to the Shetland captive bolt system, and then installed the fittings while the hull was still upside down. It seemed easier that way. You can see that the pintles are not on the same axis, but the lower one is aimed at the centre of the upper bearing and the gudgeons are sufficiently ring-shaped to let it work. We saw this system on a lot of boats in Shetland and Norway, particularly at the Unst Boat Haven and the Small Boat Hall at the Oslo Maritime Museum, on our big trip in 2004 (see WoodenBoat 118, June 1994). The local racing yoals in Shetland were pretty colourful too.

I have also had the steel plates cut for the bilge boards and the rudder, finished them with my angle-grinder, and had them hot-dip galvanised. I am going to use 20mm pivot pins for the bilge plates, with PTFE bushes. The rudder-plate has a lug left on it to form a positive stop when it is down, and I will insert a pin through the body of the rudder below the lug when the plate is up, so it will not be hanging on the cord all the time.

The open hull looks to me a lot like the Hebridean galley Aileach (Classic Boat, January 2000), obviously of Norse ancestry.

Ian Milne

Hartley - 'RUSTY'

I finished building my first wood boat last Christmas - a Hartley 'Husky' design, 10' 6" x 5' and named her Rusty.

To receive a set of plans in the post and try to work out what to use, how and when, was an exciting challenge. A number of emails and visits to Ted & David at the Duckery eased my concerns and their positive advise and guidance made life a little easier for this novice builder.

Rusty slowly grew over about 9 months. One of the great things was being able to work at my own pace, no pressure to get it finished by a deadline. The speed of construction was also dictated to some degree by finance... a bit of spare cash was put away each payday and when I had enough for the next stage I could buy what was needed without worrying about draining the bank account.

Hartley designs have been around a long time, they still identify the older way of boat building with the use of screws and nails......Ted tried to convince me that with modern epoxies most of that hardware was no longer needed.... I on the other hand decided to follow the traditional method. Having now completed this boat I can understand where Ted was coming from... this epoxy stuff is fantastic, my hesitation to leave those fixings out of the construction has diminished.

I learnt a lot last year, it was a fantastic experience to watch Rusty take shape. A number of younger work colleagues were intrigued that someone could actually build a boat, some couldn't comprehend doing this, they thought people just bought a boat. As I would explain - it is one thing to buy something and go fishing, it is totally another thing to build a boat and go fishing... a sense of achievement, pride and to sit out in the gulf and think "I built this" Not a mass produced item from a factory, but something very individual and unique. I think everyone who works with wood adds a bit of themselves to the end product.

On the 2nd January 2006 Rusty had her official launch on the River Murray. About 30 or so friends and relatives made the trek for this event, some I feel not only came for the picnic atmosphere and the offer of free boat rides, but with the slight thought that Rusty might sink! They had heard so much of this little boat, she didn't sink and a fabulous day was had by all.

The boat building bug has taken hold, I will start on a 15 foot boat later this year and already know that it won't be the last.

Glen Angus