Planning the Sea Scull

I spent some time researching boat plans for a boat that is:
 - stitch & glue boat construction since I have built seven s&g boats,
 - light weight for ease of transportation,
 - narrow with long water line for high speed,
 - hard chines for stability and
 - 300 pound capacity.

The closest boat plans that I found were for Sam Devlin's Oarling. I purchased the plans and decided to make the boat longer. I used AutoCad to add 2 feet to the length of the boat. The overall length will be 19 feet 3 inches.








Design of Lengthened Boat

I began looking for materials, particularly plywood. It has been twenty years since I built a boat out of marine-grade plywood and I was disappointed to learn that nowadays, ABX plywood is ugly. In the old days, the A side was free of defects, sanded and ready for coating. The B side was free of defects and needed only sanding to make it as sweet as the A side. The marine-grade ABX plywood was nearly cabinet-making material and with a little stain, it made an awesome bright-finish boat.

Not so true anymore. Now, the A side can have defects. I read somewhere that it can have up to 18 defects as long as they are plugged with wood. You know those annoying little football-shaped plugs? The plugs that never match the color and grain of the surface? You get up to 18 of them on the A side. The B side can have the same along with putty-filled gouges. On top of that, it is obvious that both sides are checking.

I think we killed all of the nice trees and have to make plywood out of twigs.

The good BS 1088 plywood is unavailable locally and expensive to ship. So, I paid a visit to the local building material stores to look around. Yes, they have maple, oak and birched-faced plywood but it is unavailable in thin (¼-inch) sheets. The maple/oak/birch surface is a veneer so thin that one boo-boo while sanding will expose the glue layer underneath, precluding a bright finish. And, it is expensive.

I stumbled upon "utility hardwood plywood" (Patriot Timber Supply RevolutionPly) for $15 a sheet and looked into it. The sheets at my local store were 5mm (1/5-inch), very pliable and have a sweet hardwood A side that is sanded with no defects. Of course 5mm is thin and the exposure classification is interior but, I figured, "Butter 'em up with 'poxy 'n 'glass and they will be tough and never see water. Heck, with enough epoxy you can turn a piece of toilet paper into a weapon." I am sure the manufacturer of this interior flooring underlayment plywood would advise against using it to build a boat. But I am Mo 'Poxy and know that more epoxy is always better. So, I am going for it. I am going to build a 20-foot sea scull out of epoxy/fiberglass-encapsulated 5mm interior flooring underlayment plywood.

I may be crazy, but I isn't stoopid.