What happened to the diy boatbuilders

[DownWest]

Trying to stem the tide a bit here On my forth boat. All small, this is 17 and a bit with cabin for two. Probable one of the oddities as I can do all the skills. Metal fabrication takes care of all the fittings, quite good with wood and GRP, electrics and even made the last set of sails. First paying job was rigging.
This is a fun project, ply/epôxy cat ketch. All the hull is finished, spars on the way. Work has delayed thing considerably, but moving again.
Then there is the resto project by the barn, a GRP 20ft sloop. Major work getting the keel/plate sorted. Prob launch June.

It did help that I grew up in the atmosphere, as the old man designed several boats in the post war ply revolution, selling plans, kits and complete boats.

 

[The Q]

If you go too the Wooden Boat forum You are being redirected... and the UK Home Boat builders Rally forum (UKHBBR) UK HBBR Forum
there are still a few home boat builders around, though generally in the smaller sizes..

 

[dgadee]

East Belfast Yacht Club are building away. Much - it used to be said - came in mysterious ways from Harland & Wolf. There was a TV documentary on them a while ago.

 

[Wansworth]

Although the fitting out of a bare hull of grp may not ‘pay’ as Slocums critics asked when he was rebuilding Spray it was the only way to get a boat as it is today buy an old grp yacht in need of attention.There is a definite creative feeling that the average man can achieve taking on a restoration in a modest way within his basic skills.In most cases it won’t pay but the pleasure derived awards with something tangible better than lost hours on internet or the ‘telly’..Probably recovering o
an old wooden yacht gives more pleasure as the material is more human and evades the horrors of drooping dusty hull liningand applying or grinding grp.Having restored two wooden yachts there is indeed pleasure in getting afloat again with a manageable outlay and without the skills required to build a yacht from scratch.

 

[LONG_KEELER]

Build a boat ? Most people now adays cant even change a spare wheel on their over sized car ?

It seems skill and confidence in doing DIY is often obtained if parents have skills and interest they can pass on.

Speaking for myself, my father was a lovely man buy had no interest , or skill in anything technical and just paid people to do things. I came home from school one day and he had painted the whole of my bike in white distemper . The only tools we had were in the top of the cellar stairs in a mushroom box. There was a screwdriver, a pair of pincers, a hammer , a torch and some fuse wire. If a fuse blew, my mother fixed it with the fuse wire.

What confidence I do have in DIY has come solely from sailing. Just another good reason why every bloke should own a boat.

 

[Wansworth]

It seems skill and confidence in doing DIY is often obtained if parents have skills and interest they can pass on.

Speaking for myself, my father was a lovely man buy had no interest , or skill in anything technical and just paid people to do things. I came home from school one day and he had painted the whole of my bike in white distemper . The only tools we had were in the top of the cellar stairs in a mushroom box. There was a screwdriver, a pair of pincers, a hammer , a torch and some fuse wire. If a fuse blew, my mother fixed it with the fuse wire.

What confidence I do have in DIY has come solely from sailing. Just another good reason why every bloke should own a boat.

Wasthe y father in Law??

 

[Frogmogman]

In a thread a couple of years ago about how much we had paid for our first boats, I posted about the Jack Holt streaker I built from a kit when I was 13.

It was a very fulfilling experience at the time, and greatly increased my competence as a carpenter, a skill I have enjoyed and benefitted from ever since.

What was the first boat you bought with your own cash?

 

[Manosk]

Many years ago I have read an article about self built boats( i wanted to built a 26 ft long keeler like the folkboat) and I found out by reading that it takes from 800 to 1000 hours per ton of displacement, also that even if you buy a hull and deck that amounts
to only 2/5 of the completed boat so I ve bought my first second hand folkboat and started sailing

 

[oldgit]

Bought a motor boat which was self build.
Original owner spotted a fitted out boat at an Earls Court boat show, unable or unwilling to pay that sort of money he walked away.
Returned the following year to find out the boat was no longer being made, possibly due to a downturn in the economy (surely not) ....but...
....the builder did have one last hull and topsides left in his yard.
The hull and topsides arrived on the back of lorry at the prospective new skippers home along with a 40 gallon drum of resin and some hardener.
Over the next 30 odd years the owner and the boat moved three times, the boat moved via a crane and low loader.
His son finally completed the boat. No expence was spared fitting it out, only the best.
Hull moulded in 1973, finally launched in 2005.
Original boat show price £18.500.
Invoices for home build £40.000, hours in build , incalculable.

 

[xcw]

I always thought the Hunter model was a good one; they provided the hull with (if I remember correctly) the engine installed and essentially a flat pack interior which you assembled. I was very tempted to buy one until the wife put a stop to it!

 

[Crisby]

We bought a Hunter Channel 31 as a kit and it came as a big white GRP blob on the back of a truck with everything needed packed inside and lots of 8x4 sheets of ply of various types. It took us 18 months to put it all together with regular trips to the Hamble to look at a factory boat when we got stuck, I think it saved us about £20k at the time (2002) which made the difference between affording it or not. We learnt a huge amount along the way and although our current boat is far more complicated we have the confidence to tackle most jobs that come along so it is still saving us money even now.
When we sold the Hunter the buyers surveyor said she was one of the best home built he had seen but we did hear a few horror stories, the stainless steel mast support post was supplied several inches too long and needed trimming until it was a ‘tap fit’ but one builder used a hydraulic jack instead and simply raised the roof by a few inches until it fitted........!

Chris

 

[lustyd]

... and that's without costing their time, but it's OK 'cos they're going to make millions as Youtube stars.

You're looking at it backwards. How much is it worth to a content producer to have a project to film. Their time is already paid for as a content producer, so the labour literally is free.

 

[NormanS]

View attachment 135152
It used to be popular to convert old Danish and Scottish fishing boats to gaff ketches or cutters, using pine spars and galvanised steel deck fittings. There was even a 'how to' book in my local lending library in the 70's.
Due to changes in the fishing industry, and despite the tragic compulsory destruction of many wooden fishing boats for political reasons, you can still find them, I found this one, lying Rye, on the fascinating "Find a Fishing Boat" website in less than a minute.
Oak on oak, no rot, Scania main engine, £20,000. I wish I was younger!

Many years ago I bought an old 60ft Scottish fishing boat, built by Herd and Mackenzie in Buckie. I stripped her out to a bare hull, and fitted her out as a (mainly motor) ketch. We cruised in her for 30 years, before downsizing to our present yacht. I didn't consider fitting out a hull as "boat building", but prior to that, I built a strip planked Folkboat and later a steel Alan Pape 34ft design from scratch. That was boatbuilding.

 

[Birdseye]

Whathappened to buyinga bare hull and fitting it out?

Like the kit car industry it failed as a business model thanks amongst other things to over regulation and too high standards of living. You might ask the same about 24 ft sailing cruisers. Starter boats are now 32 to 35 ft not 18 to 24..

There are still people who like a project. I watched a brand new 26ft stich and glue wooden boat going for its first sail 2 weeks ago. It looked lovely but it had taken him years to make. As the song goes, people "want it all and want it now" these days.

 

[fifer]

I would love to have the time, space, and money to build my own boat. Unfortunately I don't. So i bought an aging plastic boat and sail that instead. The high cost of living and servicing debt keeps peoples noses firmly to the grindstone unless they're one of the lucky few idle rich or retired.

 

[Minerva]

This is where the modern production builder wins. My Bavaria was assembled in less than a week, but behind that is all the time spent refining the design and layout, CNC machining all the components, pre assembling the interior furniture and so on. The slick kit producers like Hunter were able to do a lot of this to enable builders to assemble boats to the same standard as factory completed. However as the boats grew in size and complexity not only did the work required for a home build increase but the cost saving shrank. Then the RCD added another layer of complexity.

I always thought the Hunter model was a good one; they provided the hull with (if I remember correctly) the engine installed and essentially a flat pack interior which you assembled. I was very tempted to buy one until the wife put a stop to it!

We bought a Hunter Channel 31 as a kit and it came as a big white GRP blob on the back of a truck with everything needed packed inside and lots of 8x4 sheets of ply of various types. It took us 18 months to put it all together

Chris

I have a daydream of pulling these threads together, but using an old classic GRP hull.

Take a boat with the hull shape suited to what you're looking for and rip out the interior, bukheads, he whole caboodle so you're left with a a monocoque shell. All the old interior, wiring, tanks, engine etc gets skipped.

Take a super close tolerance 3D scan of the boats interior then design your new interior in autoCAD. From there you can do what the big boys do and design a layout that works for you which can then be broken down to interconnected flat pack panels like a jumbo Airfix model. The wiring system and the plumbing system nicely incorporated into the design.

Then you can put it together in the same way as the Hunter business philosophy.

All the time consuming design, measuring, problem solving and getting the layout to all fit together can be done from your home of a winter's worth of evenings. The completed layout design gets sent out to a CNC plywood cutting service and comes back with fine tolerance and the rest is just putting it together piece by piece like a jumbo lego model.

Not a commercially viable business to do on a large scale, your CAD skills need to be on point, and it won't be cheaper than buying a 10 year old BenJenBav but for a once in a lifetime build to get your custom designed, perfect, forever boat, I recon it could work quite nicely if you've got the skills.

 

[Tranona]

Some of the "rebuilds" of large classic boats have used this approach partly because after taking the boat apart there is not much usable left of the material and partly because it means that the sub assemblies can be made off site.

As to using an older style GRP hull there is no reason why a Bavaria type process cannot be used to build boats of this type from scratch - just that even at a Bavaria type price almost nobody would buy them!

 

[Stemar]

I have a daydream of pulling these threads together, but using an old classic GRP hull.

Take a boat with the hull shape suited to what you're looking for and rip out the interior, bukheads, he whole caboodle so you're left with a a monocoque shell. All the old interior, wiring, tanks, engine etc gets skipped.

Take a super close tolerance 3D scan of the boats interior then design your new interior in autoCAD. From there you can do what the big boys do and design a layout that works for you which can then be broken down to interconnected flat pack panels like a jumbo Airfix model. The wiring system and the plumbing system nicely incorporated into the design.

Then you can put it together in the same way as the Hunter business philosophy.

All the time consuming design, measuring, problem solving and getting the layout to all fit together can be done from your home of a winter's worth of evenings. The completed layout design gets sent out to a CNC plywood cutting service and comes back with fine tolerance and the rest is just putting it together piece by piece like a jumbo lego model.

Not a commercially viable business to do on a large scale, your CAD skills need to be on point, and it won't be cheaper than buying a 10 year old BenJenBav but for a once in a lifetime build to get your custom designed, perfect, forever boat, I recon it could work quite nicely if you've got the skills.

Just make sure accessibility is designed in. I recall an article in one of the magazines about a boat where the engine and saildrive were fitted and the bulkheads and deck all dropped on top. Access to the saildrive started with taking an angle grinder to the rear bulkhead and went downhill from there.

They asked the importer, "How do you change the seal on the saildrive? It has to be done every seven years" "Oh that's no problem - none of our new owners keep their boats that long." I think I've had a car or two with the same design team...