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Drift boat plans &
building the boat - since the establishment of our guiding service,
we have been interested in acquiring a craft specifically designed for river
fishing, the drift boat.
There are none produced locally, so we decided to do what Kiwi's normally do
under these circumstances - build our own drift boat! Information is, like everything else, available on the 'net! The Internet is a great source of
information, and we soon had some good examples of ideal craft for our project,
to go with our drift boat plans.
Drift Boat
Screen Saver (20 pics, 1.4mb)
The plans for our boat were eventually sourced in Dec 1999 from
Glen-L
Marine Designs, 9152 Rosecrans Ave, Bellflower, CA 90706-2138, USA. These guys
have a comprehensive Web site, with on-line ordering available, and delivery to NZ
was very efficient. The full size plans are excellent. We experienced some
difficulties with the US terminology, and the construction set-up is completely different to
any previous construction we have been involved in. The US dimensions are
Imperial - feet and inches - no problem to us older blokes, who are still trying
to adjust to the change to metric, some decades on. We discovered that two 8x4
foot sheets must be longer than two 1.2m x 2.4m sheets - necessitating another
join on the sides!
It's been a while since the garage had been used
for a boat-building project, so Ron had to have a big clean-out. Well, more of a
re-shuffle, really, as he is not noted for disposing of anything which is even
remotely useful. Meticulous construction of the building form was time-consuming, but essential. This boat design does not have internal
frames, and the set-up geometry is interesting, to say the least. We have stuck
closely to the plans in terms of structure, but have added numerous functional
embellishments to suit the use we will put the boat to.
Drift Boat
Plans & Building
Materials are NZ white pine (kahikatea), from
Halswell Timber Ltd in Christchurch. Fittings, fastenings etc were supplied by Marine
Mail Ltd, Christchurch. Glues, sealers, resins etc are all Epiglass
products.
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