well boat/ mullet boat.

[Sammy]

Hi to all.
Can someone please help me. I have been trying to build an old mullet boat/ well boat.
Can someone please tell me how they get the bow to sweep or " kick up?
I have tried several times and failed.
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Sammy

[stromborg]

Something like this?


It looks like a flat bottomed skiff with a hole in it. What exactly is the problem?

[Sammy]

Thank you for responding.
It is basically a flat bottom boat, but the bow sweeps up.
All im getting is a flat boat. How do they get the bow to sweep upward?
Thank you.
Sammy

[Peerie Maa]

If you are building the right way up shore the middle of the bottom down from the shop roof with the bow on a block of the correct height. then frame out and spile and fit the side planks.

If building upside down on a ladder jig, set the frames and stem to the correct heights, bend the bottom over them and then plank the sides, or plank the sides over the frames, and then bend on the bottom.

P.S. Welcome to the forum.

[jackster]

Sammy,
How about this?

https://youtu.be/VOK3FHy27P0

[stromborg]

The mullet boat looks like a pretty simple piece of construction.

The technical term you are looking for is "rocker". It appears to me that how much rocker is achieved for this boat is dependent on three things, the angle of the bow cut into the side planks, how much flare is introduced by the framing and the the width of the boat at the chines. You are twisting the plywood around a cone, it will curve as it goes. Get some shoebox weight cardboard and fiddle with the three variables until you get what you are looking for.

[woodpile]

Sammy,
How about this?

https://youtu.be/VOK3FHy27P0

I may be wrong here but watching this video it appears that the side planks are cut straight and have parallel sides. When assembled to the stem it seems to result in the "sweep or " kick up? " or am I just saying what Stromborg said, yes, fool around with the cardboard.

[Peerie Maa]

I may be wrong here but watching this video it appears that the side planks are cut straight and have parallel sides. When assembled to the stem it seems to result in the "sweep or " kick up? " or am I just saying what Stromborg said, yes, fool around with the cardboard.

Yes, the flare of the sides and the narrowing towards the stem cause the rocker. More flare more rocker. No flare at all, no rocker.

[pipefitter]

Here is some photos I took of a mullet boat I worked on. They are referred to as Tremblay skiffs. It shows the bottom tunnel and such, although I did not take photos that really show how to build it, or for that reference, really. They were typically covered with Chopped Strand Mat and polyester resin, and then painted with Benjamin Moore, oil based house paint. This one was converted to a marine research (hence the center console) vessel after the net ban pretty much made these boats extinct.

[woodpile]

Was always under the impression rocker was an upsweep forward and aft like this one has.

[Peerie Maa]

^ Does not have to be at both ends. Also we do not have a term for rocker when it is only at one end.

[Breakaway]

Pipefitter,

I'd love to hear a little about the reasons for the forward motor, running chracteristics, reason for the upswept bow,etc. If you'd care to indulge...please.

Kevin

[pipefitter]

Pipefitter,

I'd love to hear a little about the reasons for the forward motor, running chracteristics, reason for the upswept bow,etc. If you'd care to indulge...please.

Kevin

Two reasons come to mind. One because they let out hundreds of yards of gill net over the stern, and with the weight of the net essentially steering the stern of the boat, the forward motor helps to even things out. Sometimes these boats operated in a foot of water, where fish would be holed up on or behind shallow flats and bars.

Some of these skiffs had motor boards that would allow the operator to jack the motor above the bottom of the hull so they could push pole and work the school into the nets, and would allow them into just a few inches of water.

They handle and steer differently for sure, and for lack of a better explanation, drives and steers just like it appears that it would from there.

[pipefitter]

Here is some older photos from where I grew up. Some of us youngsters inherited these old skiffs and converted them into flats fishing rigs before flats boats became cool.

[Bill Perkins]

Here's a couple of shots I took out in front of the Tremblay shop .

[pipefitter]

Some called them "Sheffield" skiffs but most were completely unique and most mullet fishermen built their own, or helped to build them where I came from.

Last one I saw built, the guy formed the front with a vee entry from laminated cypress, then sculpted it with a chainsaw and angle grinder, then created a rabbet on the edges, and then plugged it in to the rest of the hull sides and bottom planking and then glassed over it. It was quite nice as far as mullet boats go.

I used to fish on them and I would wait for the pilot to throw his arm and I would toss the sash weight out and the net would fly off the back as they encircled a school of fish. Then came the chore of taking the fish out, which sometimes numbered in the hundreds, with one guy on lead and the other on floats.

[Bill Perkins]

Sammy ; Harry Sucher has some mullet skiff designs in his " Simplified Boat building : The V Bottomed Boat ".



You can see how the chine sweeps down from the stem and dies against the dead flat bottom of the majority of the boat .

Here's a boat rigged for netting at Suwannee Fla. some years ago . Could be some still remain ,at least as derelicts .

[KevinCummings]

Thanks for responding.

https://www.birddogboats.org/

The link will take one to a nonprofit making use of a design I reckon would be appropriate to the oyster aqua farming op.

The above photo is a good starting point. The vessel depicted in the link above is desirable. I favor the helm located just back of the bow.

[Rob Hazard]

These boats are a common sight around Cedar Key, FL., where they are used for farming clams. Their owners lease gulf-bottom acreage east of town where they raise cherrystone clams in large mesh bags which are staked to the bottom. They handle the mesh bags over the stern in knee to waist-deep water, dressed in waders or wetsuits. The boats may not be terribly efficient as boats per se, but as mobile work platforms on super-shallow water they make perfect sense.

I have never had the opportunity to visit the shops where they are built.