Boat-Building and Boating

by Daniel Carter Beard

If the joints have been carefully made, your Yankee pine is now ready for launching. Being made of rough lumber it needs no paint or varnish, but is a sort of rough-and-ready affair, light to row; and it ought to float four people with ease. By using planed pine or cedar lumber, and with hard-wood stem and stern, a very pretty row-boat can be made upon the same plan as a Yankee pine, or by putting in a centreboard and "stepping" a mast in the bow, the Yankee pine can be transformed into a sail-boat. But before experimenting in this line of boat-building, the beginner had better read carefully the chapter on how to rig and sail small boats.

How to Build a Better Finished Boat

The old-time raftsmen formerly built their "Yankee pines" of the rough, unplaned boards fresh from the saw-mills on the river banks, and these raw, wooden skiffs were stanch, light, and tight boats, but to-day smooth lumber is as cheap as the rough boards, so select enough planed pine lumber for a 12½-foot boat, and you may calculate the exact amount by reference to the accompanying diagrams, which are all drawn as near as may be to a regular scale.

By reference to [Fig. 193] you will see that A, A represent the two

Side-Boards

These should be of sufficient dimensions to produce two side-pieces each 13 feet long, 17 inches wide, and ⁷/₈ inch thick (A, [Fig. 194]). You will also need a piece for a

Spreader

54 inches long, 18 inches wide, and about 1½ inch thick, but as this is a temporary affair almost any old piece of proper dimensions will answer (B, [Fig. 194]), and another piece of good 1½-inch plank (C, [Fig. 194]) 36 inches long by 15 inches wide, for a stern-piece. Besides the above there must be enough 1-inch lumber to make seats and to cover the bottom. At a point on one end, 6½ inches from the edge of the A plank, mark the point c ([Fig. 194]), then measure 37 inches back along the edge of the plank and mark the point b ([Fig. 194]). Rule a pencil line (b, c) between these two points and starting at c saw off the triangle b, c, d. Make the second side-board an exact duplicate of the one just described and prepare the spreader by sawing off the triangle with 9-inch bases at each end of B ([Fig. 194]). This will leave you a board (h, k, o, n) that will be 36 inches long on its lower edge and 54 inches long on its top edge.