Row Boat Rebuild

A few years ago I built a 9' row boat for some friends of mine.  You can check out photos of the launching over on the family blog.

The boat has a few problems that I am going to fix up this winter.  The boat was put together with construction adhesive and drywall screws (it was all I had lying around at the time).  Over the years the screws have rusted and the glue has failed in some of the joints.  The paint is also flaking off the bottom.

I am going to tape all the seams, put a light layer of fiberglass on the bottom, and seal all the wood with epoxy.  That is how the boat should have been built in the first place.  The first step is to grind all the old paint off.  I give more updates as the work progresses.

P.S. this is not actually in my shop, I'm doing this project over in the school wood shop.

Busy Day

Some days I work on a great variety of projects.

I started the day by replacing the rollers in the clutch from a Yamaha Grizzly

Then I replaced a compressor in a freezer at the local store.

Before lunch I had a little time to work on one of my own projects.  I bent a few pieces of stainless steel to make a holder for the anchor in my boat.

After lunch I worked on a boiler in a home heating system.

I then traveled to the nearby village of Teller to fix a toilet.

After working on the toilet I used my boat to haul a load of lumber to Brevig.

Yesterday I got out of the shop and spent the day using my boat to haul supplies for a construction project.  A contractor is repairing a few of the roads in town and installing some culverts.  The contractor hauled their supplies by road from Nome to Teller, then they hired me to boat everything across from Teller to Brevig.

This photo shows two 24" diameter by 20' long plastic culverts in the boat.  I made several other trips with the boat and hauled more pipe, shovels, compactors, ATV's, etc.  There is a protected bay on the Teller end of the trip where we loaded the boat and a sheltered lagoon in the Brevig, but the 10 mile crossing in between was rather rough. 

C.O.

My Boat

We finally had a few days of nice weather here in Brevig.  Kenny and I took advantage of the sunshine and did a little fiberglass work on the boat.  In this photo we are glassing in the new motor well in the back of the boat.

The next day I used my tripod and the shop crane to flip the boat over so I can work on the bottom.

C.O.

My Boat

Today Kenny helped me get the motor mounted on my boat.

In this photo the motor is hanging off the crane on the shop.  In the background you can see my tripod.  We used the tripod to lift the boat up off the trailer.

C.O.

Lund 20'

A few years ago I built a big tripod with a winch on it that I can use to pick up heavy things.  Today I hauled it down to the lagoon to help a friend work on his Lund boat.

Growing up in Minnesota I saw lots of Lund boats, some of them very old.  It seemed to me that they could last forever.  Up here they tend to wear out in 5 to 10 years.  The rivets come loose and they start to leak.  I'm not sure why the rivets loosen up, it maybe the hard use and overloading or it might be related to the salt water?

This boat was starting to leak so bad that it was getting a little scary.  We pulled the boat up out of the water on some rollers, then filled it up with water to find the leaks.  By looking at where the water dripped out we found the problems areas.  We found a few loose rivets and one spot where 3 of them in a row were entirely missing.

Once we located the leaks we used the tripod to raise the boat up higher to provide enough access to work on the bottom.  Tomorrow we will drill out the rivets and replace them with new POP rivets.

C.O.

My Boat

Today I glued the gunwales on one side of the boat.  They are made up of three layers of 1/2" x 1 1/2".  The boat is almost 22' long, so I used that scarfing jig that you saw yesterday to splice the ends of my shorter lumber together.  Everything on the boat is glued with epoxy.  It is expensive and messy, but it is the ultimate in high strength, waterproof glue.

In this photos you can see the ramp that opens up on the bow.  It is designed to make it easy to load an ATV into the boat.

C.O.

Scarfing Jig

Today I worked on my boat.  The boat is in the middle of a large repair/modification.  It's a long story, but the short version is that I built a wooden boat a few years ago, used it a little, 10,000 pounds of snow broke it in half, I decided to fix it and make it longer.

This photo shows a jig that I built for cutting the scarfs in narrow wooden strips.  A "scarf" is a long tapered glue joint that is used to turn short pieces into long ones. 

Hopefully the weather will stay nice (the boat does not fit in the shop) and you will get to see more of the boat in the next couple of weeks.

C.O.