Due to the efforts of my dear friend and once neighbor, Pat Andersen, I am proud to share the pictures of the almost completed Honkey Dory I started back in 2006. You can read all about it and see pictures from the frames to the broken panel to straightening all here on the site. I will e-mail or snail mail Sandy all the pictures to add to the page. Anyway: One house, one job, and one Brewery later we present:

We'll have to row that someday Mike. Were'd you get that f65432g boat?

....you're going to hear that a lot. People will crowd your boat at the put in and ask "dg'you make that?"

Very nice!

I like the adjustable seat, thinking of doing something similar.

Hey, that is sweet, inside and out.

Where did you get the cup holders?

Nice work.

I will look for my receipt on the cup holders, but I know I just did an Amazon search and went for the bling.....

Gotta get my butt in gear. You're inspiring me Mike.

Mike,

Can you tell me more about your gunwales? Those are the "ledge tops" that Sandy talks about, right? How are they made?

Chris in Burley

That looks like a ledge top 3/8" thick and 4 to 5 inches wide.

On my next I'll make it 1/2" thick and a full 6" inches. If you build a ledge top boat you can--eventually--build a deck too that bolts down onto the ledge, squashing a 1/2" foam gasket. So you can be open dory day trip fishing this week and decked Grand Canyon the next.

I'm not sure how Mike made it. I put an angled strip end to end on the top outside of the side panel, glued and clamped to the panel. Next time I'll put that strip on the inside. Then I screwed down strips of plywood with scarf joints at the ends, with a fair amount of waste, so the plywood ran wild inside and out.

Used a big 1/2" inch shank ball bearing trim bit on a router to trim the plywood flush to the outside edge. Then I made a marking jig to scribe a curved line 4.5" or so (6" inches next time) to the inside. Cut tight to the line with a jig saw. Then used a big Bosch plunge router with a fence and carbide bit to fine tune that inside edge to dead smooth. Then a round over bit. Then sand paper. Then backed all the screws out and fiberglassed the underside. Then put it all back together again, using the same screw holes, with resin putty. Then fiberglassed the top side so the glass lapped over the outside edge and down.

It's more work than a wood strip gunwale. But it makes sense for any boat you might someday want to deck for big water.

Thanks for the details Sandy. That is exactly the answer I needed.

If you do use a plunge router and a fence to trim the curved inside edge you have know which way to drag the router. If you go in slowly, with a firm grip in once direction you get what you want. If you pull the router with the bit instead of against it all hell will break loose.

Cutting carefully with a jig saw and sanding smooth would work too. Perhaps a bit more time consuming. But less prone to trouble. I used my big Bosch plunge router and it worked just fine.

I built that ledge top!

Yes, it's 3/8 ply. I think about 5" wide. I made a cardboard version first, then traced the cardboard one on to some (5) ply pieces and scarfed them together. I cut them about 1/4" too wide using a jig saw so I would have some room for error, and could route the waste off. It was a big floppy wishbone shaped piece until I glued it onto the boat.
After that, i marked a line on top of the ledge on the outside where I wanted to route off the rough edge (x inches out, relative to the underside where it meets the hull) using a simple pencil jig. I then drew another line inboard such that my router bit would follow the outboard line. Finally, I tacked (stapled? I can't remember) a flexible batten that followed my inboard line (the second line) and used it to guide the router. After that, I removed the batten, and used a homebrew fence (used two points to follow a curve, instead of the typical straight rabbeting style fence) to trim the inside.
Rounded the edges, filleted, and then glassed it.

Before any of that malarkey I laminated 3 strips of 1/4"x1-1/4" fir onto the top outside of the hull so there would be a 1" wide place to attach the ledge.

YMMV.

Here's the rub Sandy, the hull still flexed considerably. Even after I filleted. It wasn't rock solid until I put in the burly inboard seat rail/mounting/ledge pieces (the ones with the cupholder holes drilled in them).

Interesting. I made a 1" inch thick laminated gunwale on the outside, using clear white pine (chose that because I had some mostly), mostly to give the ledge top something substantial to glue to. It didn't flex much. I did put a cross gunwale rower's seat in it, between mounted tackle pockets, and then it didn't flex at all.

The boat I'm building now will have a 1/2" ledge top 6" inches wide. My plan for that boat is a removable/optional bolt down deck. I'll dig out some photos of the old boat this weekend.