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Saturday, December 27, 2014

Pizza Box boat design

My little brother wants to build a boat in his garage as project to keep him busy.  I had considered getting him one of the books on instant boats but in looking thru them I thought it might be better and a bit more fun to just come up with a boat for him on my own.
I like getting the basic boat idea by thinking up dimensions and then building a model from cardboard.  Pizza boxes work great for this and I seem to have a good supply of them, about one more each week.
His boat will probably be used for fishing on the local lakes where he lives and need to be transported in the back of his pickup truck.  It will be rowed, though I wouldn't put it past him to apply a trawling motor to it at some point.
A simple hard chined skiff seems the best thing for a first time boat builder who is really a fisherman and a construction worker/tradesman, but not a finish carpenter.  He has limited tools in his "shop" so I will keep it as simple as possible.
The pizza box skiff!
11-6" LOA, 4' beam, 16" depth amidships, draft about 3"
With 3 sheets of 1/4 inch plywood
plus solid wood for frames and stem, skeg, skids
about 100 pounds I'd guess.
Very simple cuts, butt block scarfs, constant bevel on the chines, the bottom will be cut out last to the shape of the sides.
I don't think it will be a fantastic rower but it will probably have a good capacity and subtle lines.  It has a small amount of rocker that is determined by the small amount of flare and the width of the transom against the width of the midsection.  Two thwarts and maybe a small deck at the bow.
He'll have to build some oars as well unless he finds a set at a yard sale or something, but I'll include plans for those too.
I am tempted to build it myself just for the fun of it.
I will build a plywood model at the same scale and maybe send it to him.
messing about!

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