• Home
  • About
  • Contact
facebook
rss
twitter
youtube
email
Strategies for Better Ice FIshing
Jackson Kayak’s Bite Fishing Kayak to be Available in December
Rod Selection Made Easy
KastKing Releases MegaJaws Baitcaster
Guinness Now Serving Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout
  • Fish On
    • Tips and Tactics
    • Video Tip Picks
    • EZ Angler Profiles
    • Readers’ Catch of the Day
    • The Radar – Hotspots
  • Tackle Box
    • Product Showcase
    • Gear Reviews and Talk
    • Gear Tips
    • Watercrafts
  • Wading Babes
    • EZ Angler Featured Wading Babe Aubrey Brooks
    • EZ Angler Featured Wading Babe Faun Collins
    • EZ Angler Featured Wading Babe Sandy Flowers
    • EZ Angler Featured Wading Babe Brittany BASSett
    • EZ Angler Featured Wading Babe Delayne Nicole
    • EZ Angler Featured Wading Babe Miranda
    • EZ Angler’s Featured Wading Babe: @FishingBarbie760
    • EZ Angler Featured Wading Babe: Christine
    • EZ Angler’s Featured Wading Babe: Brittany
    • EZ Anglers Featured Wading Babe: Meghan Jo
    • EZ Anglers Featured Wading Babe: Brooke Thomas
    • EZ Angler’s Featured Wading Babe: Miss DeeDee
    • EZ Anglers Featured Wading Babe: Nikki Cara
    • The Nets Hottest Video Catches
  • Lifestyle
    • Wellness
    • The Skillet
    • Humor EZ Angler Video Picks
    • EZ Angler Funnies
    • Truck Talk
  • B.Y.O.B.
    • Beers
    • Spirits
    • Cigars
  • Resources
  • Advertise

The Truth About Free Boat Plans From the Internet

18 Aug 2013
ezan3803
0
boat, boating, fishing, handmade, hull, materialss, wading, watercraft, yacht

By Jeff Spira –

All over the internet, there are “free” boat plans made available for the downloading.

Jeff Spira,

Jeff Spira, owner of Spira International Inc. 

Most of these are quite old designs, many simply scanned from magazines no longer in print whose copyrights have run out and are now in the public domain. While suitable boats can be made from these plans, there are some things you should be aware of before investing a lot of time and money in trying to build a boat from these.

The first consideration should be materials. Back in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, lumber was of higher quality than it is today. Most of the logging was from wild trees that had been alive for up to hundreds of years. The mills could be more careful about which logs were turned into construction lumber and which were chopped into paper pulp. This is no longer the case; modern lumber production

comes from farmed trees grown specifically for lumber. The trees are planted and fed the proper nutrients to get them to grow as fast as possible. When they are large enough, sometimes as little as a dozen years old, they are clear cut harvested and replaced with new seedlings, as any

farmed crop. The lumber is then kiln dried and sent off to sell for construction. Finding materials to build traditional type wooden boats is difficult and expensive.

In the past 20 years, the advent to new adhesives has also greatly changes boat building. Where once, natural water based glues the standard for construction, new polymers like epoxy and polyurethane have allowed boats to be bonded together instead of screwed and bolted. No longer are expensive and difficult to install fasteners needed to build boats. Modern pneumatic guns and cordless drill/drivers have made fastening simple and combined with the modern adhesives, these joints are far superior to the older methods. The joints, however, have to be designed for adhesives. The older bolted joints aren’t correct for these methods.

Finally, with the relatively low cost of epoxy and fiberglass, thinner, lower quality planking materials are easily used to build rugged and tightly sealed hulls. Modern synthetically glued plywood is amply strong for most boat planking when covered with a layer or two of fiberglass and epoxy. In addition hardwood plywood made in Asia and Eastern Europe is now available inexpensively all over the US, Canada, Europe and Australia, that is excellent for boatbuilding.

Modern home built hull designs take into account the modern materials, fasteners, adhesives and sealers making today’s homebuilt wooden boat plans far faster, easier and less expensive than the “free” plans designed 50 or more years ago (and many not so free older plans still being sold by boat plans suppliers.) These new hulls are also more rugged, and more reliable, as most are computer designed instead of traditional t-square, triangle and slide-rule created. Like cars, airplanes and computers, there is substantial modern development that makes the older designs quaint and historically interesting, but not really suitable for today’s methods.

About Jeff Spira
Jeff Spira is a naval architect, marine engineer, writer and historian offering custom design easy to build boat plans at the Spira International website at: Spira International, Inc. Learn about boat building including stitch and glue, download a free PDF ebook with illustrations, download a free boat plan, or watch Jeff’s boat building video as featured on YouTube. Jeff also maintaining a Boatbuilding Tips and Tricks Blog at Boatbuilding Tips and Tricks.

This article originally appeared at http://www.spirainternational.com

 

Comments

comments

ezan3803
About the Author

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Sign Up For The EZ Angler Newsletter



EZ Angler Wading Babe Aubrey Brookes

EZ Angler Wading Babe Aubrey Brookes

Click on Image to see gallery and interview

2 Girls and a “Crappie” Party on the Ice!

RSS B.A.S.S. Blog

  • Top lures at Sabine River 2021

EZ Angler Facebook Community

Featured Post

Strategies for Better Ice FIshing

Jackson Kayak's Bite Fishing Kayak to be Available in December

Rod Selection Made Easy

KastKing Releases MegaJaws Baitcaster

RSS Tournament News

  • Bass Rankings Suspends Site
    More than 65,000 anglers. More than 5,600 tournaments spanning beyond 19 seasons. More than 200 fisheries. Eight years a labor of love encompassing countless man hours. One website – BassRankings.com What started as an effort to be an unbiased way of ranking the sport’s best (hence the name), Bass Rankings has grown into the largestRead […]
  • Evers Dominates REDCREST
    A week ago, Bryan Thrift was cementing his status as arguably the best angler in the sport after finally winning his first title. It seems Edwin Evers wants that title, too. There is no debate, Evers is fishing better than anyone in the sport right now. Despite the switch to a new tour and format,Read […]

Get Em’ Now: EZ Angler Wading Babe Lady Tanks (click on image)

Get Em’ Now: EZ Angler Wading Babe Lady Tanks (click on image)

google

Recent Posts

  • Strategies for Better Ice FIshing
  • Jackson Kayak’s Bite Fishing Kayak to be Available in December
  • Rod Selection Made Easy
  • KastKing Releases MegaJaws Baitcaster
  • Guinness Now Serving Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout

Archives

Categories

© 2018 EZ Angler.com - manged by Watters Media and Communications - All Rights Reserved.
  • By Jeff Spira - All over the internet, there are "free" boat plans made available for the downloading. [caption id="attachment_6376" align="alignright" width="150"]
  • Delicious
  • Pin It
  • Buffer