Tuesday, February 3, 2015

ALOT An Easy to Build Jon Boat

One of the things that may keep people from building boats is all the angles and trying to figure out how to make angles that are angled.   Likely, that is why stitch and glue boat building is popular is that thickened epoxy makes those joints for you.  On the downside, epoxy can be a mess and is a paint to sand.  The other thing that may keep people from boat building is time.  There never seems to be enough of it - life sort of takes it away.

These two things were the inspiration for this design - ALOT.  Could a boat be designed that could be really easy to build by an 11 year old( with supervision) without epoxy in a reasonable time frame?  Could a boat be designed with these parameters that does not scream "Homemade Boat!?   Constructed from only home center materials?  ALOT to ask.

Boat designs are often inspired by other designs and ALOT is no exception.  The basic jon boat was one, the Boggy Creek Bandit was another, throw in a Carolina Skiff and a ShadowCast Ankona and top it off with the SoloSkiff.  The boat also needed to have a capacity to hold an adult and a child as well as some gear.   The basic dimensions of 12 x 2-8" were determined based on capacity as well as material efficiency.

Here is ALOT on one of its first fishing trips with the proud skipper and builder at the helm.


The flat bottom makes it quite stable but it took a bit to get used to the "feel" of the boat.  The second time out we were both casting from the front and back decks standing up.


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