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I live in the mountains of western Virginia (altitude about 2500') and a good part of the larger trees here are white oak. The oldest ones seem to have started growing about 1920, which fits in with...

For lots of righting moment with low weight, and trailerable, how about a daggerboard with a heavy bulb on the end? This Selway-Fisher CR-25 (http://www.selway-fisher.com/Yachts2435.htm) is the kind...

Store-bought C-clamps don't have ordinary UNC or UNF threads - they have Acme threads, which run more smoothly and with less play. Any of you tool-making guys ever make a clamp with Acme threads?
...

Tabernacles are less common for lug rigs because many lug rigs are designed for no stays. If you have a jib you pretty much need to have stays to keep the jib stay tight, but with no jib - typical...

The time-frame for the Nancy's China design can be found from the story of its name: It could supposedly be built for the cost of one place-setting of Nancy Reagan's White House china.

The dinghy will last much longer if you give the ply end grain a couple of coats of epoxy. Paint won't keep water out of the end grain and the ply will delaminate, starting from the edges.

Since you want stability, examine the flare of various designs. As Phil Bolger points out i, flare in the topsides makes for tenderness. You have to lean out over the bulwark to do something like...

If you aren't a stickler for 100% authenticity, you could probably use a fabric-reinforce rubber cup, e.g. http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNSRIT2?PMPXNO=4580320&PMTERM=59510800 .

Other things to...

If you compare catboats and sharpies of the same length, you are comparing boats of much different size - for example:

Ted Brewer 22' Cape Cod Cat - 5850 lbs displacement
Ted Brewer 32' Mystic...

Look at Paul Fisher (http://www.selway-fisher.com) and Dudley Dix (http://www.dixdesign.com).

I'm not familiar with the Knarr, but the surfaces of marine and exterior plywood are adequately waterproof without any coating. The edges, however, must be protected. For a stitch-and-glue design...

A little off topic but... Vineyard Haven (Tisbury) really is a friendly place for boaters. You can go to the harbormaster and get a free dinghy permit decal that allows you to leave a dinghy on the...

A question about Rustoleum Marine paint performance that no one has addressed yet: fading.

Some of the trim on my boat is painted with a tile-red off-brand urethane porch and floor enamel. The...

I have used what is sold as "southern yellow pine" - loblolly, I suppose. I know that many on the Forum decry it as crap, and perhaps it is compared to old-growth longleaf pine, but some of it is in...

There are details for a berth made from standard weight iron pipe in Sam Rabl's Boatbuilding in Your Own Backyard. I think that in his design he gets around the left-hand-thread problem by drilling...

I've been unhappy with the imported silicon bronze wood screws I have been using. The bronze is very soft and I have to be very careful not to torque them off. Based on other threads on the Forum...

Is your plywood a hardwood or softwood ply?

In my experience paint on softwood ply exposed to the weather will eventually check unless an epoxy seal coat is applied first.

Are those WINDOWS in the eyes of the boat??
Certainly not what you'd want for an ocean cruiser, but what a way to see the Mediterranean!

I hold my balanced lug to the mast with a parrell made from 1/16" steel cable and hardwood beads about 3/4" diameter. I strung the beads on the cable and then made loops in the ends with crimp...

A tongue extender will work if the ramp goes deep enough. On some ramp the concrete ends before you get deep enough and there is a step down at the end of the concrete. You can get the boat in the...

Paul Fisher has done some designs for small keelboats. His Safe Harbor 12-1/2 is an updated, strip-planked version of Crowninshield's Dark Harbor 12-1/2. His Calm Harbor 12-1/2 is another version...

I've long thought there was something fishy about NIS Boats pricing.

Back in 2006 I was considering building an NIS 18. NIS Boats was asking AU$490, which corresponded to US$344 at the time. ...

Cood clamping for a glue like rescorcinal that does not fill gaps is more complicated than pressure alone. The 175 psi is meant to ensure that the gaps that the glue has to fill are small. The...

If want to try and sell it, you can post it for free at http://www.ladyben.com.

If you want to give it away, you can post it at http://woodenboatrescue.org.

Sailcloth isn't very expensive compared to the time you spend on a sail. Unless you can use an old sail by making only minor modifications, I'd say start from scratch.

You can get some good deals on lead on eBay. There are apparently quite a few guys who make some money by collecting tire weights, melting them into ingots, and then selling the results to...

Perhaps another quote - from Clarence Darrow, one of Cap'n Nat's contemporaries - is appropriate:

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

I would move the mast step and leave the daggerboard alone.

This is my thinking:

The lateral resistance is a combination of hull, daggerboard, and rudder. Moving the daggerboard 6" will...

There have been several informative threads on mast boots, but they have all been directed toward masts that are removed and re-stepped once a year at most. I can see that some of the techniques...

I don't know how well the traditional sharpie rudder steers, having never used one. Paul Fisher (www.selway-fisher.com) designs his sharpies with kick-up rudders like the one on Drake:...

Sailed on Saturday with the new yard. The low-stretch halyards plus stiffer yard greatly improved the set of the sail. The only problem is that I have a little bagginess right along the yard at...

I worked on a drawing board (doing process-plant piping, not boats) in the days before CAD, and I can tell you that you can get accurate results from scaling the plans of a skilled designer like...

I once considered eastern red cedar for strip planking because a specialty lumber yard near me advertised it at a good price. When I went to look at it there was so much sapwood relative to...

Thanks all for your input. It looks like my new yard will be 2-1/16 to 2-1/8 or so at the point where the halyard attaches.

The original design was for a smaller boomed lateen. Boom and yard...

My Stevenson Triad design has an 83-sq-ft balanced lug that reefs down to 58 sq ft. The boat is now in its 6th summer.
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/alkorn/Brigit%20Small.JPG
The photo shows it with...

Not misc. boat related, but misc. wood related. Architects are planning wood skyscrapers!...

Very likely the boat is not worth restoring, but $400 may be worthwhile for mast, fittings, trailer. Trailer expecially. Of course, the trailer could be a worthless pile of rust.

Then again, if...

You can download the USDA Forest Products Laborator "Dry Kiln Operator'a Manual" at http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publications/several_pubs.php?grouping_id=101&header_id=p. Has lots of info (many...

Whatever kind of rowlock you use, you'll find that a rowing a decent wooden rowboat is much easier than rowing an aluminum boat designed primarily for outboard power.

The tulip poplar (yellow poplar) is the tallest tree in the eastern US, but the sycamore has the largest trunk. Sycamore trunks used to be used to make dugout canoes: there are records of a sycamore...

Authorities that have a problem with geography. It's the eastern shore of the Atlantic that touches Europe.

I don't have any experience with water-based paints on boats, but I do on houses. And this I know: if you paint acrylic latex directly over alkyd in an area exposed to moisture it WILL PEEL. You...

One problem with caulks, sealants, etc. is that there is no requirement that the manufacturer tell you what's in it unless it's something toxic. I've spent time reading labels in my local hardware...

Speaking of weird MD-VA border things:

The Potomac is in Maryland: the state line is the low-tide line on the Virginia shore. In the old days there were some Maryland counties that had legal...

If you don't need a trolling motor for other things, you shouldn't compromise your design simply for the thrill of boating in Walden Pond. It's pretty small, and you could row across it quickly.

I bought a copy of William Atkin's "Of Yachts and Men" from an on-line used book store, and the copy that arrived had an inscrition on the flyleaf:

"To Charles A. Bookwalter II, wishing fair tides...

When I originally rigged my boat, I put eyesplices with thimbles in the ends of lines connecting to shackles, becket blocks, etc. Now I'm thinking of modifying the rigging and I'm wondering if the...

The distance from carburetor to manifold is short, but the engine shown appears to have a separate carburetor for each cylinder. Fine for a racing engine but not very practical for a boat. To get...

One reason for not using horizontally opposed (boxer) gasoline engines in boats is that they don't work that well with carburetors.

If you have a carbureted boxer engine you get problems with fuel...

Traditional (glueless) strip planking is essentially tight-seam construction, edge nailed to make sure the seams are tight. It works because the "planks" are so narrow that the moisture-driven...