It took about two months to let the fresh bamboo we cut from our land dry out (held in a curved shape) and be ready to use as the stringers and gunwales. But the stringers have been tied up and two layers of fiberglass skin added, and it’s time to try the boat out in…
The Owl: Tied the stringers and added the skin
After we let the bamboo dry for 2 months, we started to tie the bamboo stringers and gunwhale with the main structure. Started tying from the center point of the center stringer, then cut each end of the stringer to the proper length and tied both ends. Tied a bowline knot to the hole on…
The Owl: Gluing
We have glued all of the frame parts today. One fun modification we will try is to use bamboo freshly cut from our land for the stringers and gunwales. (After drying and treating for termites.) bending and drying bamboo for gunwhales.
The Owl: Cutting the frame for a skin-on-frame boat build
We have gotten interested in boating, everything from canal boats on the canals by our home to sailboats to row boats. So we thought “why not try our hands at building a boat?” We found an open boat design from Hermit Cove Boats bases on a skin-on-frame technique. It includes the plywood layouts in a…
Driving an electric ferry boat around the pond
A few weeks ago, I finally got around to testing the thrusters on the ferry boat. These are very small thrusters meant for a small ROV (remote operated vehicle), but I don’t intend the ferry boat to go very fast. First we mounted a simple arcade joystick into a box with a microcontroller and connected…
Repairing the long tail boat
We built a small boat dock when we first began construction (even before I started this blog) so that we could move the second hand long tail bought we bought to the new house and park it there. (We had been keeping it docked at the local boat shop where we bought it, but I…
Mystery print: 3D printed boat thruster gearbox
I’ve spent the last week printing and assembling a prototype gearbox made from PLA. If you were curious at all about my mystery print from last weekend, you can see it inside of the gearbox here: The entire gearbox is made up of about 18 different printed pieces totaling about half a kilogram in weight….
Mystery print
Would you care to guess what these things are? I printed up four of these yesterday. I’m not telling what they are yet. Praew thought they looked kinda like a mold for muffin cups. Then again, she made a really good kaffir lime and poppy seed muffin recently, so that probably influenced what she was…