Christopher,

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Laszlo

There it is. That's nice. That looks like a lovely way to spend a warm Fall day. Congrats on your new boat.

I don't know which I find more amazing - that kind of pond in your yard or a Lowes with boat-quality wood. Either way, you live in a magical place :-)

Hope your sail test goes well this weekend,

Laszlo

 The high pressure that brought the warmer weather also brought dead calm. No sail test. I did drop it in the pond and check some things out. Was surprised at how high she floated even with 2 people and a small dog loaded.

You can get decent stuff at lowes if you keep an open eye and mind. I used a 10 ft closet pole for the sprit. I am testing a 5 mil plywood product called revolution ply. It is only a buck more than luan, but the quality is much better. Very happy with test results so far. The mast was made from some carefully selected pine boards that were machined for grain and knots. 

I always take a quick trip down the lumber aisles when I have to get something from them. I once came across a pile of doug fir 2x4's, perfectly straight, rift sawn grain with no knots. I grabbed 10 of them real quick. no use for them at that time, but a very nice find.

This was not my first build, so it did not bother me to deviate from the plan recommendations.  It might not be an heirloom piece, but I have no doubt that it will serve me several years and I wont be upset to bang it around and put some "character" marks in her. I prefer boats with a workboat character.... 

Interesting, I may have to go out and take a look at that plywood. I did some checking and it's poplar. It's meant as an indoor underlayment, which means that it needs to handle some amount of getting soaked even if it's not full on exterior grade. It's also 5-ply for 5mm which puts it way ahead of all the other cheap plywoods, but it only has 1 A side.

While I wouldn't use it for anything that needs a lot of bending, it looks reasonable for something with gentle bends and low stresses, like the Jimmy Skiff. I may have to head out and buy a piece to experiment with - boil test, epoxy, etc. Maybe this is finally the replacement for that inexpensive luan we used to be able to build boats from 40 years ago.

Thanks for the pointer,

Laszlo

   They actually label the bad side, the faces are very nice. Quality is very good and uniform from one sheet to the next. The poplar comes from renewable plantation stock which I think helps with the uniformity of the product. The bad. Very thin faces. Very easy to sand through. Not happy with polyester resin test. The thin faces require slow setting so that you get good penetration past the faces. The slow epoxy works great. We accidently dropped the boat while flipping it over. She dropped from about 2 ft onto the end of a 3/4 in angle iron. The impact was right at the joint of the seat and side hull. the iron scraped down the inner hull and actually partially penetrated the seat top. The fillet joint was unaffected! The break in the seat top was revealing as well. The only damage was at the site of the impact. No signs of ply separation under the stress of impact. Could not have asked for a better test, but the sound of it happening was sickening.lol Good enough for me anyway.

I changed the outwale from the plan. I have 2 layers of doug fir 3/4 x 1-1/2" epoxied to the side hull. I wasn't sure if I could do it and if everything could handle the stresses. I was going to add mechanical fasteners, but I havent felt the need to. So far I have had no issues and I am satisfied with the results. The outwales have enough meat that I was able to simply drill a 1/2" in hole for the oarlocks. Even with that added stress at that point from rowing there has been no problems.

BTW, the picture above actually shows the bad side. I was going to paint the outside afterwards so therefore the bad out.