This is a journal of the construction of two skin-on-frame boats.

These are the initial designs but I ended up going with the far right one for materials cost. Plywood is cheap but epoxy is not so a skin on frame proa with a vertical lifting rig would be lite, cheap and easy to build without a shop. I still want to build one of the other ones when I have an actual wood workshop. In total costs were about $210 for materials, it weighed about 40 pounds, but I never had a chance to implement an outrigger and sail setup. Without the outrigger it made an excellent canoe/umiak-on-a-diet that challenge ever ounce of my years of canoing experience to keep it from tipping over. But here is the journey...

This shows the first and second day of the build. I tried to make sure it was lined up by running a string from bow to stern and measuring it with the middle spreader boards. This was started on the week before Thanksgiving in 2007.

Third and fourth day with risers made out of pine boards left in a friend's apartment. At this point the form is pretty well set but because it is basically a box with no horizontal stability. A couple of strings going diagonally kept it stable enough to continue work. There are pegs and waxed nylon string, no glue.

The wood is painted with red latex from my workplace and then covered with nylon. The only seam is at the ends, sewn with a needle and the waxed nylon string. It was then stretched over the gunwales and stapled with a staple gun. Not pretty but very functional. The nylon had to be cold and wet to keep it stretched out, once it dried it pulled tight.

This is a bow on shot, as you can see it is very narrow. It is only 24" at its widest and around 16' long. It was building this in the basement of a row house. Not a lot of room.

This is the first application of polyurethane. It soaked up about a half gallon of the stuff. The smell was awesome, it just drifted up through the house. It turned the nylon clear, so cool.

The christening of the boat in March . This was shortly before launching it in about 3 inches of water in this tiny pond in a park on the North Side of Pittsburgh. The paint on the bow was done with spray paint and painter's tape and was still wet when I launched it. I stepped in and got soaked because I found out it was horribly unstable. But again, 3 inches of water. I got approvingly heckled by some homeless guys on the way carrying it over. It was only about 30-40 pounds or so.

Me in the boat, I found quickly I had to shift my weight to the middle so the end would not drag on the bottom. But it worked! I was very happy. I could see the water through the inside.

As you can see, it was very long, or er, tall. I carried it on my shoulders down to Allegheny River a week later and put it in moving water. Tracked straight as an arrow but the current scared the shit out of me. The homeless guys under the bridge gave me kudo's again. My friend and I sunk it so see if it would float on it's own and it would, but that ended the experiments. A couple of weeks later it traveled to my new apartment in two parts as bookshelves due to storage problems and got reborn again as:

This is the first two days reusing the wood from the first boat. I used only hand tools and a power drill. I had to cut mortises for the rib which meant drilling two holes and chiseling out the rest. Not as clean as a router, but very much cheaper. I created the basic shape based on the Eskimo Greenland kayak, measuring 22" beam and a short 16' long or so. The next day it suddenly turned into bitter winter and delayed work for months.

The third day was spent cutting with a damn handsaw the deck. Each one is place in relation specifically to my body measurements. The oval cockpit is put in only when the skin is being added. I learned a lot about compound cuts to make everything work. Wood pegs, glue and some screws kept this together.

A very simple steam bending rig. The white oak ribs were cut on a table saw into 1/4" long strips, soaked in the bathtub for a night and a day and then thrown into the rig for about 10 minutes. It works, used brute force to make the curve. I broke some, but I learned quickly. It was a very rewarding experience. I would do the steaming in my kitchen and run out onto the porch in 20 degree weather to place and ziptied them. It worked, but given the nature of Greenland I shouldn't be surprised.

So this is where it is now, once the weather gets above freezing I can work on it again and replace some broken wood from trying to work on it in the cold. I am going to attach a bicycle wheel to the end so I can haul it to the river,a good 2 miles away. More pictures will come as soon as spring gets here. And all the links that guided me on the way. What an awesome community out there.