The plans, Selway-Fisher, 12ft 6in motor canoe [stitch and glue]

The plans were a little confusing at first to be honest. I have worked from many drawings over the years, but none in the boat building line. I studied them for a couple of days, on and off, just to get the gist of things, finding them to be very understandable. There were a couple of small points that were unclear, but Paul Fisher was very helpful with these. As a result I have ended up with a little boat that I’m extremely happy with. It’s a very pleasing shape; stable, very roomy for a canoe and extremely nippy with the 2.3 Honda, and also rows easily with 6ft oars In conclusion, a super first boat building project.

The Materials

When selecting materials for the boat, cost was a major consideration. I looked at several different grades of ply, and in the end settled for 6mm construction grade marine plywood, which is still high spec but perhaps not attractive enough for any face work, [fine for a paint finish].

For the gunwales and various other components I chose 35mm x 15mm sapele which is fairly dense, fairly inexpensive, bends quite well, and a bit more rot resistant than pine or fir - hopefully!

Not having any previous experience with marine adhesives, I once again trusted to luck, and chose to use west systems epoxy resin and 405 filleting mix. This was the only aspect of the project that I struggled with, all the usual mistakes, such as mixing too much etc, however practice makes better.

For the paintwork I took the advice on the literature that came with the boat plans and used good quality oil paint. I found that the two pack Polyurethane was rather expensive, and as the boat will not be kept in the water dulux wheathershield exterior u/c/and gloss was ideal, particularly as the hull has three coats of epoxy inside and out, I can’t see anything getting through that lot. For general filling and fairing I used Ronseal two pack wood filler which cures very quickly, so saves lots of time (something we are all short of), closed cell polyfoam for the Buoyancy tanks fore and aft, a few marine grade stainless steel screws and not forgetting plastic cable ties for stitching.

The tools for the job.

Generally speaking, I don’t think you need all that much in the way of tools. It depends on your approach and experience with woodwork. The whole project could easily be done without the use of power tools at all, it would of course take a while longer, depending on your own time scale (if you have one). I personally prefer to use a combination of both, e.g. for the gunwales-Seat framing-combing etc a block plane-gent saw-tenon saw-cabinet scraper and try square were the most useful, for the hull panels. I cut one complete side out with a jigsaw (sabre saw) then filed-scraped-planed and sanded them to their final shape and used them as jigs for the other side so with the aid of a plunge router and a 10mm top bearing guided tct cutter it made the whole process fairly speedy (ish), but lets not forget that the best tool of all is the one between your ears, its amazing what bits and bobs you can convert into tools if you use your imagination.

Why did I choose this design

Initially I was interested in something like a kayak or a pirogue but as I fancied taking up fishing again I thought that these canoe types possibly would not offer enough room for all that equipment and me. Luckily I stumbled across Selway Fisher Design, and the Waterman 12ft 6in motor canoe. There were not many pictures of this design, but I really liked the look of it which fortunately for me paid off.

All along I planned to use the boat for fishing etc in Langstone Harbour which is situated between Portsea Island [where I live] and Hayling Island on the south coast of England, where there are many sand banks and shallow areas to negotiate. The shallow draught of this design turned out to be perfect, you could say fit for purpose. Once again a big thanks to Paul Fisher. I shall be looking on his site for my next project.

It’s something else!

Must be old age creeping on I think but I cant believe I forgot to mention that building this little boat [my first] has been one of the most satisfying things I have ever done, there’s a joy in building anything [no matter how modest] that works well, but to get out on the water in your own boat that you’ve built yourself is something else, so if your thinking of doing it, don’t think to much just do it,
Happy boat building, Andy Somerville,