Building boats is a business in itself. Local councils invest in boats and its making. Obviously no one has to be an Einstein in building a boat. For making a boat, plywood is used to join pieces together. The technique of joins is called scarfing in which the ends are tapered to get a surface for sticking. In a normal boat building process the planks of wood are joined together for sail boats.
There are various methods and products used to build boats.
- Wood
- Steel
- Aluminium
- Fiberglass
- Composite
Speaking of wood it is widely used and easily worked out. Used in creating small boats of 6 metres, its resistance depends on factors like density and hardness.
With time marine organisms enter the product and can deteriorate the same in time. In order to prevent rotting of the wooden material, woods like teak, totara and cedar should be used. They have some natural chemicals in them.
Pinus radiate is one such wood that does not rot quickly. For amateur building of wooden boats, plywood is used in construction. Recently tropical woods like mahogany, iroko and azobe have started being used in market. No matter which wood is used, they should be FSC certified. To join the wooden components of a boat, glue, screw, rivets and nails are used.
In order to build a wooden boats, there are two kinds of joints available namely finger joints and scarfed joints. Finger joints are impractical to cut by hand and instead a CNC machine is used. No matter the shape being simple or complex these machines are catered to cut large planks of wood to make boats.
Only the difference being in case of complex designs the machine takes more time and in case of simple designs, it takes less time. Scarfed joints require some external alignment whereas in case of finger joint wooden pieces are just pushed together. Finger joints have an advantage of providing smooth stress transition for wooden boat building.Scarfed joint finished boats are more appealing than finger jointed boats. In wooden boat building process, it is almost impossible to fix two finger joints pieced together that are different from each other.
There are many kinds of boats available in market. The boat kebab which consists of molds and skins. The skins or the planks are usually assembled on the molds of the boat. The Avocado, which is a canoe, pedal, paddle and row boat. Built by designer Richard Thompson, this boat bundles all components in one package and lastly a patisserie which has two circular frames that help turn the boat 360 degrees.
Boat Building 