Steel Boatbuilding

[weekend welder]

Has anyone here ever done any boatbilding? Id like to try my hand at it. somthing small maybee 16-18 foot and trailerable. and if that goes well maybee a larger boat for coastal cruising. Has anyone been involved in such things? Im interested in knowing if there are any specialty skills needed. I am a pretty good stick welder and I am also very good at MIG and flux core.

[FusionKing]

I have and I constanly repair boats daily mostly they are all aluminum on the hulls I work on. I do repair some steel hulls tho.
You could do it.
Shape (design) and warpage control would be your biggest obstacles on prototypes. Steel would be heavy also and by the time you used thin enuff material to keep the weight down it would be weak. Prolly why you don't see small steel boats much untill thicker materials are not so much a factor.
Painting the backsides of everything could prove impossible after welding so rust would catch up to you quickly. Not saying you could not do it just saying there is more than enuff reasons NOT to use steel in a trailerable boat.
Aluminum makes much more sense...IMO

[DSW]

I don't see why it wouldn't be posible if you had the funds and time. There are a lot of designs out there for plywood boats. I would think that the rib and shell system wood work ok if you translated it to metal. Its the basic idea behind larger vessals.

I've done wood and fiberglass boats. The only steel was on a barge. ie floating steel box.

If you have the funds, SS would be top notch. Also alum, but my alum skills would need to be a lot better.

[Broccoli1]

I don't see why it wouldn't be posible if you had the funds and time. There are a lot of designs out there for plywood boats. I would think that the rib and shell system wood work ok if you translated it to metal. Its the basic idea behind larger vessals.

I've done wood and fiberglass boats. The only steel was on a barge. ie floating steel box.

If you have the funds, SS would be top notch. Also alum, but my alum skills would need to be a lot better.

"and trailerable"

[DSW]

Hey, we can trailer our 80k Cat 988 rubbertired loader! You just need a bigger truck and trailer! I have seen some BIG boats on lowboy trailers. The guy I used to work for had his 40' topaz moved on a trailer. Yes it was a permit / wideload and we had to take down the tower.

I was thinking more on the lines of costal craft as opposed to a john boat.

For a small boat I could see a Alum frame and thin alum attached with water tight poprivits. Basically the same as a john boat. I could however see the same thing done in SS done at 4x+ the weight.

[aametalmaster]

I ride in a steel boat all the time over in a park in Pa and i always wonder why someone couldn't build one. But i don't have enough time or big enough shop...Bob

[shenandoah]

Had one built for me in London and live on it now in France. Built for the rivers and canals of Europe. The hull came from old plans of traditional Dutch working boats, but the superstructure is my design.

Photos of the build are located here - http://community.webshots.com/user/dewebb1

Steel boats / ships are all over the inland waterways of Europe (thousands of them) due to the beating they take traveling through locks, etc. Mine has a substantial "D-Bar" rub rail that takes most of the beating and I am always repainting it. Some locks are only 5.10 meters in width and my ship is 4.85 - not much clearance on the sides.

I have a friend who is building one, essentially like mine (24 meters) single handedly. His is a work of art and, I hate to say, will be the most beautiful boat of its type in all of Europe when it is done - right now, mine is, IMHO! He has been at it for three years and has all the steel work completed and is now outfitting the interior.

His main arsenal of tools are a stick welder, plasma cutter and a grinder - not to mention a heavy duty, but ancient, crane to move the steel plate. It is being build on a set of rails which will take it a couple of hundred yards to the side of the canal where two very heavy duty cranes will lift it into the water.

Quite a project, but one that shows what one man and a lot of determination can do.

[weekend welder]

How does your barge handle on open water???? I have been doing alot of internet reading and reserch on Dutch barges. I have been unable to find any American builders that offer a boat of this style. I am so pleased to have your reply due to my fondness of the Dutch barge. I would like to build or have the hull built and fit out myself a 55 to 60 foot by 13 or 14 foot beam barge to cruise the Great lakes, the Erie barge canal in New York and the Intracostal waterway.

hope to hear from you again

Frank aka Weekend Welder

[SignWave]

Im working on a 16 ft welded aluminum now. prgress is slow as life is getting in the way and the fact that i have to make a living so that i can work on the boat, but somewhere in the anals of this forum, I posted some pics of what im working on.. you could dig that up...

[theweldor]

It can be done. I built a 48 ft. replica of a Chris Craft years back. The only thing that yu need to do is throw the square overboard. Everything on a boat is built on a curve. You can do that with a piece of wood 1" square and about 10 ft long. I also built a custm 40 ft. twin hull a few years back. Although I wouldn't want to buy the fuel for either one of them today. They both went with gas engines instead of diesels.