Nov. 2005, I started

Brian at Melbourne's Wooden Boat Centre showed me how to loft the offsets of the 18-foot Modified Sharpie Skiff from Reuel B. Parker's "The Sharpie Book". In the above photo, you can't see the lines, but you can see the batton being used to adjust the shear to please the eye. The boat is drawn full scale on The Wooden Boat Centre's drawing board.
 
From the lofting drawings, moulds, bulkheads and knees were cut.
 

 

The Wooden Boat Centre procured all materials for me including the lumber for the transom seen being glued up here.
My work area is in the middle. The knees and bulkheads are being glued up.

 

Here are all the pieces laid out. The moulds aren't shown.

Doesn't look like much.

 

 

Those pieces have to be mounted on something so I was instructed to build a "strongback". This was squared, leveled and bolted to the floor.

 

Here is the transom, aft bulkhead and 3 moulds mounted on strongback. All are oriented by vertical and the building line... or they are suppose to be.

 

 After much, and I do mean MUCH adjusting, (like 2 weeks worth of sitting and looking and making small changes) my sense of aesthetics was finally satisfied or maybe I just got tired and I went ahead and mounted the chine and shear boards (horizontal long planks).

 

Plywood doesn't come in 20 foot lengths so I had to make my own. I had a hard time believing you could simply glue plywood together but Brian assured me that it’s common practice. Above is a poor photo of the plywood stacked ready to make a 10 to 1 scarf. A planer, pad sander and hand plane are used to make a common angle.
Here’s a even more poorly lite shot of the finished angle.

 

Two and a half sheets of plywood glued together forming one sheet long enough to make the sides and bottoms of my Sharpie.  

I wisely cut luan (thin, cheap plywood) templates. then traced the shape of the sides and bottoms onto the freshly scarfed plywood.

 

     
  You can just make out the luan templates on top of the 2 long scarfed plywood sheets. The shape was traced and then cut with a skill saw.
  Brian (right) and myself checking the fit before epoxying.

 

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