Stich & Glue construction for a TOTAL NOVICE

[Guest bananawind]

I am embarking on a great adventure here. After years of never finding the RIGHT dink, the Two Paw 8 seems to be the perfect choice, almost.

What are the odds of a high school wood shop drop out actually making it through the process? To be fair, I should say that I have a cordless drill, a real in depth book on stich and glue and will be working with a full sized set of plans (with the optional B&B CD).

The sailing season is upon me now and I will be starting this task in August at the very earliest.

[Kidd]

I am finishing up a CS17 after 2 years of work (interupted by A major surgery). I also was pretty much a woodworking novice. I have made mistakes and my second boat will be much better than the first but there were no mistakes made that enough epoxy and wood flour wouldn't fix. Go for it and build your boat!

[JeffM]

I'm a two-by-four-and-ply type home handyman. The last time I saw the inside of a woodshop was junior high -- and my little project turned out crooked. Just like my boat. (Nobody is allowed near her with a tape measure or T-square, lest they find out that the distances from centerline to gunwhales are not quite equal...) But d***ed if she doesn't look pretty good and sail even better despite me! Go for it. There's a lot of help right here, and I took advantage of just about all of it. The two-paw is a good choice. I'm thinking of building one myself, so I'll have something with good capacity that's still car-toppable. (Probably should have built that one first!)

[PAR]

Stitch and glue designs were intended for folks just like you. The nature of the construction process permits a great deal of screwing up, cutting on the wrong side of the line and other cute little things that will have a perfectionist pulling their hair out. With the wonders of thickened epoxy you can prettify just about any problem. Combined with this and other sites on the web, you don't have much of an excuse to not build any longer. So get to it and post lots of pictures so we can see how is going. You'll do fine, most will think it's a store bought little boat and it'll make you very proud.

[Howard]

I think the chances of you getting a nice little boat that will float and do what you want are very good. As the others have said, a stitch and glue boat is not that hard and if you WANT to do it, the hard part is over.

The odds that your first boat will look as nice as the museum quality pieces you might see some of the guys on this site building are not that great. You are going to make some mistakes, but they will be minor and for most, only you will know where they are. Almost every boat has a few mistakes in it. The really good builders are better at hiding or fixing them than we are.

Having said that, you can up your odds and outcome with a few simple little tricks. The first one that I found out about too late was the importance of a good, fair batten. The second is when laying out the boat, measure everything twice, get it faired up right with that batten, then cut outside the lines a bit and plane back to them. You will be much more accurate than trying to cut to that line. Do the identical pieces stacked together so they are the same. It will fit right and it will look right from the beginning.

With these two little tricks, the outline of the boat will magically appear in 3D when you start stitching together. When you see those six flat panels in 2D come together to form a 3D boat, you will be hooked.

[Kidd]

One more little tip, if you have pieces which require more than an 8 foot span (such as the sides and bottoms of a CS17) Join the plywood before cutting the pieces. :oops:

[John Turpin]

Bananawind,

Check out my Two Paw 8 project website. It was a great project. You'll have a blast and make a nice little boat too.

http://teamturpin.org/twopaw8/projectpics1.htm

[JeffM]

Very nice building sequence, John! Gone adventuring yet?

[John Turpin]

Sadly, no adventuring. But, soon. Very soon. It's getting warm and my workload is stabilizing.