I got the plans from Harold H."Dynamite" Payson. You can order plans by going to his site Instant boats. click here

Instead of 1/4 inch plywood, I used Mahogany doorskins. I've got a 16 foot long vacuum table and 2 layers of doorskin were laminated to form the sides. The result is a skin that is less than 1/4 inch thick and pretty light.

The frames and breast hook have been located and the side panels have been located and epoxied in place.

Another view of the frames installed and clamped in place.

I used a steel bench to facilitate the framing. It got the boat up off the ground and made it a lot easier to work on. The frames were clamped to uprights tack welded to the bench.

Here it is just about ready to turn over. The seams were filled with epoxy thickened with chopped glass strands. The surface imperfections were filled with epoxy and microballoons.  The bottom is laminated using a core of 1/2 inch Cedar strips for stiffness without adding a lot of weight. The strips were resawn from old power poles. They were then laminated with layer of doorskin on either side. The total thickness is less than 3/4 inch but probably weighs less than a single piece of 3/8 plywood.

Here it is turned over and just about done. I get carried away with building and sometimes forget to take pics.

To facilitate the finish work, I've got this rotating trunnion. It raises and lowers hydraulically and has a hand cranked gearbox to rotate the assembly. It makes things a lot easier when working alone.

Overall the boat went together pretty well. There was more filling required than anticipated but the finished product is a boat that could be built by a fairly inexperienced builder. Extra time was spent adding blocking to the frames because this boat might be subjected to some pretty rigorous trials. In the future a small removable center console might be added. This thing ought to be blast to ride with about a 25 horsepower electric start motor and forward steering.

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