Building an Adirondack Guide Boat
This page will help you through the steps to building an Adirondack Guide Boat. They first started building these boats about a hundred and sixty years ago in Up-state New York for the tourism industry. You can get a kit that you can put together yourself. You can build your own fifteen foot boat out of wood, epoxy resin and brass screws. You get the kits from a company called Adirondack Guide Boats Incorporated in Vermont who are making a range of vessels thirteen to eighteen feet long.
The Adirondack Guide Boat kits are very comprehensive and they are made so that people at home can build these boats without feeling intimidated. The stem, for example, has already been rabbited, so a lot of the work has been done for the consumer, and it is pretty much just an assembly process. The ribs are made out of spruce wood. The decks are made out of cherry wood. It is a very high quality kit.
To start putting the kit together, you have to make a builder's jig. There are instructions for how to build these in the kit. Start off with the bottom board, which is also the keel to the boat. Plane off the edges to extend the line of the ribs. The ribs are fastened to the bottom board with screws, making sure that they are counter-sunk. Once the ribs are all attached, put the keel and ribs assembly on top of the jig with the ribs facing down.
The ribs need to be faired using a rasp. The first wooden strip is laid on the hull and then epoxy resin is placed on top of it and the second strip is put in place. Repeat the process for the rest of the strips. Make sure that you take off any excess epoxy with a squeegee type applicator. There are about 50 strips to each side. Then the deck boards are laid in the boat. The deck boards are where your feet rest on the bottom of the boat. Cleats are put in to hold the seat, which is then placed in the boat, and then put in the back-rest.
|
.
Home
Australia
Patrick O'Brian
Model Boat Building
Build Frigate
16th Century Ships
17th Century Ships
18th Century Ships
ship of the line
Ship Ratings
Sitemap
|
