Thread: The jonboat project

So...

My Father in law and I decided to get into this great sport of Bass Fishing,
and needless to say...we were hooked... !

After reading through Shannon's ride thread, we decided to build our own...mini bass boat. It's primarily called a "Jonboat" or a form of a "skiff", very popular in the states.

After looking at numerous plans, we decided to draw up our own plans in CAD,
and we have now started with the project. -Being in the IT industry, I never
new that something that looks so simple, could be such hard work to construct. -All respect Tjoppie !!

Today, 13 September 2009, we started construction. I have included some pics for those of you who whould like to see what we have been getting up to.

Enjoy

Very nice. Please keep us posted, I love seeing a project like this coming together.

Awesome stuff Fishzilla, good luck and keep us appraised of your progress.

Welcome to the world of DIY boats, soon you will suffer from a serious case of BBV (boat builders virus), very similar symptoms to FTD (Fishing tackle disorder)

Just a word of caution, although designing and building your own boat is possible you need to understand the basics of boat design and boat building very well before you tackle your own design or you will just experience heartache and disappointment. That's why I bought plans

There are some great boat design CAD programmes around like FreeShip that allow you to check your boat design for possible problems, but they still can't tell you if your construction methods are right or wrong.

It looks like you are going with a plywood planking on sawn wooden frame build method, different to my method of stitch and glue but perfectly acceptable, just heavier.

Your most critical part is the framing that you are doing right now, get this part wrong and your boat will never ride like you want it to.
You need to construct yourself a nice building jig to build the boat on. The way you currently have the frame suspended over the two trestles is wrong, as soon as you add any more weight to the frames they will bow in the middle causing your hull to have a "rocker", a boat with a rocker will flop up and down terribly.


Please don't take this the wrong way, I would rather chip in now and try help where I see a problem so that you can make a success of your build.

Give us a bit more info as well, what dimensions, what power, what material and construction method are you going to use?

Fishzilla, sorry I'm raining on your parade.

I might be wrong here as I'm not sure what build method you are planning on using, but if what you have shown in these pics is your actual boat frame I need to caution you on the materials be used.
Pine wood is no good for structural framing in a boat, because of the knots it has in it, wherever you have a knot you have a serious weakpoint.
Meranti is a good choice, it's stronger, has very few knots and handles water better if it ever gets in.

Thanks to everyone for your interest in our project.

Shannon, thanks for all your advice. We have never built anything like this before, so we are doomed to make mistakes as we go along.

Your advice however is duly noted. We are not planning on investing thousands of rands into this project, but we still want to make it work though.

As we go along, I am sure we will discover a lot of areas where we can improve.

The boat itself is not intended for "High Speed"... we plan to creep along the waters, looking for those big piggies....

We appreciate any advice we can get from people like yourself.

We will post some technical specs later, such as dimensions & power mechanism.

This project is far from done !

Will keep you guys updated.

Thanks - FishZilla & Budso.

FishZilla don't take me the wrong way, I'm just trying to steer you clear of a very expensive bonfire. It really excites me that someone has found the inspiration to build their own boat after reading my thread.

On the boat building forum that I frequent I have seen many guys try to build a cheaper boat by using inferior materials only to have to build the boat all over again after the cheap one fails.

You can build a 12ft Jonboat for about R5K using plans that cost about R500 ($45 + shipping), using all the right materials. This is probably going to be my next project

If you are building a planning hull you need a hard chine and the rear section of the hull needs to be straight, if you are building a displacement hull (one that you can just putter around on at idle speed) you should use a soft chine and the rear section of the hull needs to be tapered.

A displacement hull is far more forgiving than a planning hull in both design and required materials. When a boat planes huge forces act upon the bottom of the hull and the design needs to take these into account.

A planning hull can obviously ride at idle speed but it does it very inefficiently, a displacement hull cannot ride properly on plane no matter how much power you put on it.

Good luck and keep us posted with lots of pics

Just a few tips:
You can't use wood glue to hold a boat together
You can't use polyester or vinylester resin to seal wood.

You must use epoxy resin to seal the wood and waterproof the boat, you also use epoxy resin mixed with a filler (like Silica or wood flour) to glue all your joints up (no screws needed), when it dries it is actually stronger than the wood.

Here is a link to some very helpful wooden boat building tips
How To and Tutorials
This is the same place that my boats plans come from, the forum support is outstanding and you get help all along the way providing you have bought one of their plans

Hi Shannon,

Your advice is much appreciated. We will re-think our strategy going forward, to ensure we do not
end up with a very expensive bonfire...

Thanks for your assistance !

Wish this week would be over so we can go build... !
FishZilla

How's the project coming along FishZilla?