BYYB Forums

Hello all,  I've decided to to build my mother a fishing skiff for Christmas.  She has been bugging me for a few years now for a boat, so i figured while i am storing funds for my vacationer ply order might as well take care of her. 
  I started out by digging thru all my old plans i have laying around  and found a set i stashed away just because i liked the lines of the boat. They are for a 14' flattie skiff by the late brightwood boat company.  It is a stitch and glue plan that make a real salty looking skiff  but I prefer a more robust build so i just used the patterns and framed in the rest as i went.
  So all that this little skiff needs is 4 sheets of ply and a few assorted long boards.

here are all the flat pieces cut out and ready to go 3-d
I started with the stern and then the bottom adding stringers much like the vac/weekender builds are done..  Here is where I leave the plans.  as this is going to be a fishing boat that is used in salt water and i expect it to get some rough treatment it is being overbuilt. I shaped up a bow-stem and added framing to all the joints

now that the frames are in the seats can be built.


With that done its on to the rubrails and grabrails and the majority of the wood cutting is near completion..

And after 4 good solid days of working on her, its time for a roll over to fair/epoxy/paint and keel the little skiff on my next week home. My version of this little boat is i'm sure a fair bit heavier than the as built model but i feel certain that this boat is stronger.  She is absolutely stiff as a board and should hold up very well to any abuse mom can give her. I will add more after next week when i get all of the epoxy/finish work done and get her moved onto the trailer.

Wow!! Nice work, what could you accomplish with a month off? Looks solid as a rock

Hello again all,

Well  this week off was a short one!  between putting in an extra day and family needs I was only able to put in 2 good days on the skiff.  Didn't take pictures either. just figured shots of me covered in sawdust riding the sanders wasn't going to be that interesting! I did get the hull smoothed out/filled and covered with epoxy.  Boy what a learning curve that turned out to be.  First thing i noticed was this stuff smelled like peanut butter!!  honest i didn't taste any but man all i could think of was reeces cups!!  This epoxy seems to have more trouble wetting out the cloth than the old fiberglass I'm used too, it also doesn't go as far and it is easier to starve the cloth with.  I probably should have purchased another gallon of epoxy for this project but ya live and ya learn....  Sanding also seems odd to me, the epoxy is gumming up and getting soft with any hard sanding really clogging up belts and pads quite fast!  so I'm off to search the forums and see what more i can learn about this marvelous stuff that smells like peanut butter.....  yumm yummm.   

Nice looking boat Matt!!