Another Interesting Home Built Steel Boat

[Fah Kiew Tu]

Thank you Windward, I watched the series. This is the most pro hobby project in the history of YouTube. What a tour de force of retired master craftsman talent.  I don't know why more people don't get that starting from a proper CAD model and getting everything cut out first is just way way easier and faster to build,

This bit depends a lot on where you live. In my case I don't think I'd have gained much if anything by getting all the plate cut by someone else. The hull didn't take all that long to do anyway and a plasma cutter makes clean cuts following a template. I freighted all my steel into Tasmania because the local steel merchants wanted far more than the price in one of the big mainland cities.

As for his woodwork, it's a standard above what I aimed for but I did everything myself not had other people do bits so had to go with what I could do. We did cut nearly all the timber on my place and I air dried it for years before I started on the interior. Now I'm almost finished sewing the berth cushion covers and working on the standing rigging. Launch day is getting closer but there'll be no YouTube videos at all - not my thing.

FKT

 

[Foiling Optimist]

Fah Kiew Tu at least you have to post some photos! Can you talk about how long you took for planning vs. building. Did you make up all your templates from plans in advance? It's cool to do the woodwork yourself.

 

[Foiling Optimist]

I was editing my previous post but had to retreat suddenly to the bar with work colleagues. I suspect in reading your posts above, Mr. Tu, you share to some degree my visceral distaste for these ill conceived low-skill boat projects. (not that we can't stop watching them as one observes the proverbial car wreck.) For me it's particularly depressing to consider what the lack of consultation  with experts, such as buying actual plans, says about this person's understanding of the value of living in a functioning society. How could you be a middle class employed person in an advanced country and not get that there might be something more to boats than it looking roughly the shape of a boat on land? How could you function with this bad a case of Dunning Kruger syndrome? This Rusty Junk fellow is particularly terrifying as he doesn't come across as being otherwise that eccentric.

 

[monsoon]

This bit depends a lot on where you live. In my case I don't think I'd have gained much if anything by getting all the plate cut by someone else. The hull didn't take all that long to do anyway and a plasma cutter makes clean cuts following a template. I freighted all my steel into Tasmania because the local steel merchants wanted far more than the price in one of the big mainland cities.

As for his woodwork, it's a standard above what I aimed for but I did everything myself not had other people do bits so had to go with what I could do. We did cut nearly all the timber on my place and I air dried it for years before I started on the interior. Now I'm almost finished sewing the berth cushion covers and working on the standing rigging. Launch day is getting closer but there'll be no YouTube videos at all - not my thing.

FKT

Would love to see her.

 

[Mr. Ed]

The whole thing is very German.  From the highly skilled, read highly trained, machinists, wood workers and electricians, to the ultra-clean workshop to the community around them.  The trade workers there are always craftsman and are often artists.

Gustav was absolutely wonderful. To be so competent (and well funded) and to have such obvious glee in the whole project. The first fellah (the “boat” that looks like a boxing glove) is I’m afraid not all there.  

 

[dylan winter]

I love to walk around a boat yard and look at all the projects. You have to admire the determination of these guys. I celebrate the existence of such men.

At least the steel ones can be recycled into cars, and the concrete one become roads.

The ones that make me sad are where they buy a viable plastic boat, tear the guts out of it, put most of the bits in the dumptser - then realise what they have got into and put it on ebay bragging about all the ground work they have done.

D

here is a nice picture of a nice boat in scotland

 

[Sail4beer]

Ok, I’m bored this morning for once, so I watched the last video and was going to work my way back and realized most of you are too lazy to watch but want the content so here we go!

1.Welded some 250lb sheets together to form the bow

2. Kept welding for 800 hours to “complete” the hull. (The back goes on last  ) Look at that thing on the bottom; it’s important.

3. Painted the “front” part and stood inside. By the way, he’s 6’3”. Isn’t that how tall Brent reported himself?

4.Formed a keel and will add ballast as needed to attain proper weight after launch if necessary.

5.Once the project is complete, the keel will ride beside the hull on this trailer so it can be transported legally to the ocean. 8,000lb Boat,  8,000lb winch!

 

[Sail4beer]

6.The tow vehicle. Has a 383 with 40,000 miles on it. Don’t know how many kilometers...he rebuilt it himself. He was a race car driver after all.

7. He’s going to faux finish it so it looks like a wood boat! I like wood boats, just not rusty ones. Here’s the idea though...and don’t worry about the thousand dollar vintage longboard he’s using for the oil based “finish”. Either that or it’s water based and he’s using paint thinner for rag huffing when the camera isn’t rolling.

Can’t upload any more shots for some reason. So I’ll be back later with more

 

[Jud - s/v Sputnik]

So on the completely other side of the spectrum of a home build I tender to you:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY96LsebsXYoicxJjfVOLLA

Sooo much work.  Impressive.  

A different material entirely --wood-- but I was tremendously impressed when I saw the  Parsey's former "Taleisin", especially close up inside, where Larry showed me a few details.  How in the world does anyone have the time to do such fine building work, I've always thought, from keel laying to finish, and then making it ocean-ready!  (The  bar is high indeed.)

 

[Sail4beer]

And last but not least, him hitting the road in his racecar to get more grinder disks.

 

[Ed Lada]

A different material entirely --wood-- but I was tremendously impressed when I saw the  Parsey's former "Taleisin", especially close up inside, where Larry showed me a few details.  How in the world does anyone have the time to do such fine building work, I've always thought, from keel laying to finish, and then making it ocean-ready!  (The  bar is high indeed.)

Yes, the bar is high, but plenty of folks are happy to do the limbo under it.

 

[Fah Kiew Tu]

A different material entirely --wood-- but I was tremendously impressed when I saw the  Parsey's former "Taleisin", especially close up inside, where Larry showed me a few details.  How in the world does anyone have the time to do such fine building work, I've always thought, from keel laying to finish, and then making it ocean-ready!  (The  bar is high indeed.)

Couple friends of mine built a custom Ed Burnett carvel planked double ender. Really great work on a gorgeously shaped hull. Not my cup of tea at all, I like metal boats myself, but I appreciate fine work regardless of the medium.

I'm afraid that I have no respect for this man though. There are a lot of books out there, there are a lot of proven free designs, licenses and supported designs are dirt cheap compared to the actual building cost. If you want to build a boat, it's the height of arrogance and (misplaced) certainty in your own abilities to just start hacking materials together as you go and then using a bigger hammer to make the edges fit without even attempting to do ANY research before you start.

FKT

 

[Mr. Ed]

I’m with you FKT and, much as I have little empathy with steel boats, I admire people like you and Gustav and Steve of Panope who do it right. I can sort of understand the psyche of it. 

 

[SloopJonB]

This guy is "building" that boat the way an 8 year old builds a tree house.

I wouldn't let him build a fence.

 

[Ishmael]

This guy is "building" that boat the way an 8 year old builds a tree house.

I wouldn't let him build a fence.

I'd love to see a fence he designed and built.

 

[mikewof]

1. Cool thread.

2. I really wanted to like that hull, he's trying something different.

3. It's possible that I'm completely missing his design approach here, and I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to be a disaster in the making based on what I saw in video. He seems to assume that the come-alongs will prevent the hull from spreading and the thwarts will prevent the hull from collapsing. But those thwarts seem pretty anemic, and they don't offer any support against the hydraulic pressure below them.

A good steel hull should look like the outside of a steel swimming pool, the pressures are similar, the cross members distribute the forces as monocoque. That poor hull looks like each steel panel is going to have to fend for itself, with most of the the compressive force going to the welds. It seems the steel version of the Flyin' Hawaiian.

 

[Ishmael]

1. Cool thread.

2. I really wanted to like that hull, he's trying something different.

3. It's possible that I'm completely missing his design approach here, and I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to be a disaster in the making based on what I saw in video. He seems to assume that the come-alongs will prevent the hull from spreading and the thwarts will prevent the hull from collapsing. But those thwarts seem pretty anemic, and they don't offer any support against the hydraulic pressure below them.

A good steel hull should look like the outside of a steel swimming pool, the pressures are similar, the cross members distribute the forces as monocoque. That poor hull looks like each steel panel is going to have to fend for itself, with most of the the compressive force going to the welds. It seems the steel version of the Flyin' Hawaiian.

I'm sure it will sink much faster.

 

[Sail4beer]

But hopefully video will emerge as well as the skipper 

 

[Ishmael]

But hopefully video will emerge as well as the skipper 

It will be close enough to shore that it will make the Flipper look like a success.

 

[RKoch]

I'd love to see a fence he designed and built.

That looks remarkably like my fence. I didn't build it, it came with the house. I just keep patching it and propping it up.