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MRB Blog
2021-02-07-1301
Flash Gordon
Fly Tying instead of boat building today. It's zero. It's Super Bowl Sunday and I don't feel like heating up the shop.
2021-01-30-0611
High Tech Design Process
Mock up a few seats with buckets, coolers and milk crates. Sit there. Work the oars. Close your eyes and imagine were everything goes.Think a hundred times. Cut once or twice. Cut a third or fourth time if you have to. There is no mistake that cannot be fixed. Some mistakes can be a bit expensive. But they're still fixable. All of them.
2021-01-27-1312
Decking!
How do you deck a big white water dory? Most builders build a deck 4 to 6" inches down from the gunwale.
I'm going to build it so the deck spans from the top of one side panel over to the top of the other. The gunwale is an inwale only and invisible at that because it will be below the deck. I'll put long low U-shaped grab rails all the way around the edges so tuff can't roll off the boat. But water will. The top of most boats become a 100 gallon scoop that takes up too long to drain in adrenalin situations. A flush deck will drain almost instantly. I want to keep the passenger seating area as small as possible too. I'm hoping there is no need to build those so they can collect another 200 gallons of water for each big wave.
Beyond that everything next is up in the air. Not even squarely in my head just yet. I'm winging this one. From the water up.
The decking will all be removable. So among other things I can remodel everything as time goes by. To start I want three side-by-side passenger slots slightly forward of the middle, with the rower behind that. There will be no fourth passenger. Not unless I build an alternate deck. But that's doable because all of this will bolt down over a thick foam gasket. Permanent nothing is a design goal here. Everything removable, fixable and changeable. Including side panels and gunwales.
2021-01-22-1927
Ready for the deck
Gluelam gunwales installed today. Bulkheads and deck come next (this one is a white water boat--not a day trip fishing boat).
Older (move down) Blog Start
Do it your self wood fiberglass drift boat and white water dory plans
DIY Wood and Fiberglass Drift Boat Plans -- drift boat building -- online drift boat blueprints
The Honky Dory -- a wide white water dory
Beavertail: all around do anything boat well-suited to Fly Fishing, now as 15' or 17' feet
Buffalo Boat -- the smallest pickup truck boat that will hold three in the boat
Montana Riverboats Buffalo Boat
The buffalo is a standard 15' 48" wide driftboat chopped off at both ends. Unlike a Rapid Robert, which is pointed at one end, the Buffalo Boat is chopped off square at both ends. The idea was to build a short, lightweight pickup truck boat built from the fat business-only portions (the middle) of a standard boat. The Buffalo Boat is now going on 25 years old and still going strong. This one is sitting on a trailer, but the Buffalo Boat does fit nicely in the back of any standard size pickup. If you place it on top of a spare tire and drop the tailgate, it will even fit in the back of a small pickup. The boat pictured here is a high-sided, fully-rockered Buffalo Boat. You can challenge surprisingly difficult water with this boat. Many users, however, do choose to reduce the rocker by up to 3", and to cut the height of the side panels down by as much as 4" or so, in order to make a less wind-resistent skiff, suitable for fly fishing in non-white-water conditions.MRB Dayak -- as fun as white water gets
I love this little boat. Building plans and step-by-step instructions are not finished and perhaps never will be. The diagrams and dimensions are finished however. Experienced boat builders can plunge right in. Right now. Beginners should know there will be some problem-solving along the way. The important information is all there. But the step-by-step instructions are not. I'm 69 in 2017 and I've got other things to work on before I'm ...... So maybe it's best to think of this as a freeby add-on to the completed plan sets already available. This little boat sure is fun to row. I can do anything with it. Even head back upstream at times. You can hold it in fast water and turn on a dime. And it sure is stable, even in very big water. It's a great little white water boat, although I did flip in once, after dropping into an 8' foot hole sideways, like a fool, because I was trying to ferry away from a wave train and didn't see it coming.
DIY Stitch and Glue Drift Boat Building. Digital blueprints, online plans images diagrams and step by step instructions
One-off Wood/Fiberglass and All Fiberglass Construction
Purchase a $30 dollar plans access password
* Dimensions and instructions for four different boats* How to copy another driftboat hull
* How to design and build your own hull from scratch
* How build a stitch and glue boat from someone else's framed-boat blueprints