JEM Watercraft

Who needs a kayak? Caulk those joints and throw that thing in the water, and you'll be good to go!

It's a little late to be chiming in here, but my Issaquah was built from 4mm Okoume and it came out great. The only caveat is that you will absolutely, positively want to put the stiffeners across the bottom. On our first test paddle the bottom flexed an amazing amount. With the stiffeners, it's bee...

I just dropped by to see what was going on at JEM, and what do I find? Another Issaquah on the way! Looks like it's going fine -- congratulations. Do you have any special plans for the boat? Ours left on a week-long Canadian trek about five days after it was finished. Oh, and by the way. We placed o...

I don't know about Easterners, but I've helped two friends here in Washington build drift boats from plans available at Glen-L. They were traditional plywood-on-frame construction, with a fiberglass wear layer on the bottom. They went together without too much problem and work well. I don't know if ...

JEM wrote:The Buc has a lot of twists and turns to it. You might want to consider working in smaller sections with overlapping pieces of cloth (don't overlap right on a seam).

Sounds like buying futures in fairing compound would be a good investment.

Since this got wiped out by the hacker, I'll repost it. The trip was in August. The new boat spent a good week on Murtle Lake in British Columbia. John, my 16-year-old, went with 10 Scouts and three adult leaders from his Boy Scout troop. Their fleet was eclectic: in addition to the Issaquah it incl...

Matt's right. We were planning to build three boats this summer as a Boy Scout project and he graciously arranged an agreement to let us build up to three boats for a negotiated fee -- part of which is a library of photos. Building note: The Issaquah has four panels per side, all of which are curved...

We've finished cutting out all the primary boat parts. Instead of marking and cutting each piece with a saw, we made templates out of 3/8-inch particle board. We then used those as templates to cut out the parts using a router with a flush-cutting laminate trimming bit. The advantage to this method ...

David (13-year-old-son) and I are getting ready to start gluing up the panels. I'd planned to use fiberglass tape for this. Some random questions: 1. In an email you mentioned butt blocks. Do you recommend these? 2. When mating the panel pieces, if I use 4-inch 9-ounce fiberglass tape can I get by w...

Cut out the molds today. My 13-year-old son David did much of the work. He thinks cutting molds is really boring, though, and is looking forward to cutting boat parts tomorrow. Our first boat together was a simple pirogue. I imagine that he thought this was going to be just as fast. I'll post some p...