JEM Watercraft

12/30/04 - I started laying out the frames, stringers and motor well panels today. This is a pretty complex little JEM of a boat ....Here is a sneak peak of what I am gonna call "XXX"...


I took pictures, but a sheet of luan with pencil markings is pretty boring ...I plan on cutting out some pieces tomorrow and will post some pictures...I am making templates with the luan because this is a prototype and I will use a router with the templates to make the final panels out marine plywood....

to be continued....

A lot of dust flying today...I think I'm going to try a dugout canoe next and use a circular saw only

01/01/05 - Drug everything out of the garage to the patio for a morning of saw dust making...Lesson learned from my last boat, do all the cutting out of the garage, saw dust will get everywhere...Here is the fruit of my labor...


All frame templates are cut, as well as the stringers, transom and motor well panel...

Chalk's building tip of the day.... When you cut all the frames (bulkheads) out, stack them up in there building order i.e. 1,2,3. Doing this will allow you to see if anything is miss cut or looks out of place. Look left to right at each piece in the stack and look for errors. I found an error today doing this.... Stack them like this....


I thought two frames looked a little suspect, upon a look at the drawings and a measurement, I found that both were off in "Y" by an 1/8"....Here is a shot of me fixing one of the frames....


Tools needed to get this far - Sheetrock square, 40 inch ruler, 16 inch combination square, tape measure, pencil, sharpie, two sawhorses, 4 clamps, 8 foot batten (laying out long points), calculator (deviating from the plans ), circular saw, rotary saw, belt sander, orbital sander (I sand all my cut edges, less splinters), extension cord, hand saw and a good back



To be continued....

RedAye from the "other" forum posted some fishing pictures and I noticed his boat and rod holders. After a few messages I got some good pictures of the rod holders, which also hold a push pole...XXX will have some rod holders like RedAye's...The boat is a Sundance Explorer, here are some pictures of the rod holders and boat.







To Be Continued....

Man..3/4" sheets of mahogany plywood is heavy, but all the frames are layed out and waiting for a date with the saw....

I cheated a little on the plans...squeezed another bulkhead out of a sheet by rotating and fudging a little..The bulkhead is 48-1/2" , by the time I fillet and fiberglass I will have to sand the sharp edges off the bulkheads....So to lay it out correctly I needed to find a point in space...I used my long board and some clamps to find the point and layout the cut lines.....



I need to layout the hull panels and start cutting....

To be continued....

Maybe I'm out of line here, but I must ask. Why are you using plywood as thick as 3/4"? The PT boats of WWII were aboyut that thick.

3/4" is just for the transversal frames. Chalk wanted a completely open center area of the boat and it called for some creative framing and a subfloor. Plus she'll handle 20hp.

The rest of the hull is not that thick.

Yep - 20 horse is a good reason.

The frames are basically only 2 inches wide, so the weight is not that much....It's them heavy arse sheets, it takes to make them

By the way you must of misprinted the horespower, it's a 25

Chalk wrote: By the way you must of misprinted the horespower, it's a 25

20

Well hope I made enough sawdust for JEM…I have cut most all the 3/4 and 3/8 pieces out, still need to cut notches out and make the stringer and motor well mates…

All that’s left now is laying out the hull panels and cutting them out…Then I can start getting jiggy with it and make it start looking like a boat…

I’m hoping JEM will send me a couple yards of biax and some epoxy for Valentines…