Boat Forum / Building / March 2006

I am interested in building a woodstrip canoe and have been reading the
book, Canoecraft, as my main reference.  I have a couple questions if
someone can help me.
1.  Is this book sufficient alone to guide me in building a canoe?  I'm a

I am removing the paint off my fiberglass boat.  My question is, can
you accidently take off the polyester resin or fiberglass while taking
off the paint?  Should I just take off half the paint?
jon

How would you mount the strainer? This is for a sea water intake to
the water pump on a Yanmar single cylinder diesel. It's a Vetus (?)
heavy plastic basket strainer you can clean out by removing a wing nut
on top to access the basket.

Hi, Steve
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, the energy loss is certainly a factor - weight is not as much a
factor, since I have to add 1« ton of ballast anyway(closed up pond).

free 201 boat plans in pdf from clinkers to cabin cruisers
goto
http://www.filefactory.com/get/f.php?f=66a53b8627fce8b0ee78c14e
and follow your nose

I am told there are two sides to every story. My story started
September 6, 2005 when I placed a special order for two 7x15 ss ports
from NFM. What made them so special? I asked for the 10 mm glass.
Little did I know that NFM had never installed 10 mm glass in a 7x15

I picked up a 1957 Mercury Mark 25 outboard on eBay a while ago. Mine
is red and white, exactly like the picture at
http://www.oldmercs.com/mk25.html
It is supposed to be 18-20 hp. It has good compression and is in great

If you are familiar with the Universal Atomic 4 gas engine, you know that it
originally used raw water as the cooling system.
Moyer Marine, and Indiga Electronics both sell a Heat Exchanger which can be
mounted near the engine, therefore eliminating the raw water as the cooling

Looking for experienced boat builders here.  I am building an okume kit
kayak and am wondering if I can save weight by not placing a full glass
layer inside the hull.
My thinking is that I can get away with only glassing the butt joints

We have a hot (or maybe cold) debate about ice coolers going between myself
and a couple of friends.  I swear by my 58 qt Coleman Xtreme but one friend
has a 60qt Frigid Rigid and the other went nuts and bought a 55 qt Icy-Tek.
The Icy-Tek and Frigid Rigid are built much better ...

Has anyone built either of these boats.  I'm thinking of a smallish
boat that is easily trailable, shoal draft, and primarily daysailed in
the waters of tampa bay with occasional overnight for my wife and I.  
The questions I have are:

Does anyone have experience casting copper tubing into a lead keel?
To function as a keel cooler

Kipor or Honda generators versus engine driven alternators?
I see two or three problems with a 'normal' generator setup.
1 - I want 1 or 2 litres of petrol on the boat, in the 4-stroke
outboard and that's it.

Not that any of you are contemplating casting a keel but I just got a call
from a guy in northern New Jersey that needs to sell off about 10K pounds of
30% antimony lead and will deliver most places between southern New England
and Virginia. Mixed with pure lead scrap or wheel ...

Without specialized equipment you can not measure the impedance of your VHF
antenna.
A couple of alternatives are:  Disconnect the antenna coax from the radio
and substitute a length of bare wire about 18 inches long into the