The Wooden Boat Build

My father and I began building a small sailing vessel from three sheets of plywood in 2009. The build began with the ordering of plans from Devlin Designs Inc. Sam Devlin is a practitioner of a style of building called glue and stitch. His designs are drawn up with this method in mind and he makes fantastic boats come alive from simple sheets of ply-wood. If a couple of monkeys like me and my dad can build a craft with such beautiful lines, anyone can. Thanks to Sam and those who went before him.

Please vist his website for more info:

http://www.devlinboat.com/index.php

Our boat is a design called the Mud Peep. She's a flat bottomed 12 footer, a little like a Pirogue.

http://www.devlinboat.com/mudpeep.php

The first thing that must be done when building a ply wood boat is to join the 8 foot ply wood sheets into 12 foot sheets. This is done by making scarf joints. We looked to google for info on successful scarfing and we came up with this site:

http://www.boatbuilder.org/mudpeepscarfingandlofting.htm

In fact, I think I was looking at this site when I decided to buy the Mud Peep plans.