A fun little marsh boat project...

John Robinson

John Robinson

Well-known member
My buddy with the SnowGoose and I have for some time been talking about building some light, little, shallow draft marsh boats for some of the small-shallower waters we'd like to hunt. Neil liked the mo-marsh fatboy and some others he saw on the internet, so using those boats as inspiration I drew up some lines which we plotted out to scale (1"=2") and Neil made wooden a scale model. We cut that model into 1' sections, this is an old trick a sailboat designer told me about years ago, it saves a lot of trial and error in fairing your lines during the design process.

I took the individual sections and scanned them into my computer, then copied and pasted the jpeg into my AutoCadd. It took a little work to get each section level on the drawing and scaled to exactly match my drawing but I did it, then traced each one in auto cadd. So now we have plans. The boat is actually small enough for us to plot out full size sections to use as patterns when we build our boat. Here is a pic of the model all cut into sections. Each piece is laying flat so you lose the perspective of the rocker.

IMG_2319.jpg

Does anybody know how I can either import a PDF of my cad drawing here, or convert the PDF into something that will import? I'd like to share my drawings.
John
 
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John,
I have no clue how to help you get the plans on here. I would love to see them when you do get them up. Neat looking little boat. Shawn
 
John,
Very cool.
To make a pdf of that, you will typically need Adobe/Acrobat Writer. Then, instead of doing a "save to", you merely do a "print" and set the printer to "Adobe Writer-pdf" and it will do the rest. Then you would have to upload the pdf to a website so you could link to it for folks to open.

If you don't have a website to upload it to, give me a shout and I'll load it onto my website like I did for Eddie Kershaw. You can see that by scrolling down on my website to the bottom and the Eddie Kershaw Article:
www.lockstockbarrell.com

Let me know if I can be of service.
Lou
 
I do have acrobat and already have it saved as a pdf. We do this a lot with our architectural drawings as that way I can email them to any blueprint or copy shop that has an appropriately large plotter. I tried saving the PDF as a jpeg directly from the pdf and I only got two options, either save as a txt. file that didn't do anything or simply copy the pdf as a duplicate pdf? I think I'll go back to the plot manager in auto cad and try to make a jpeg right from the start.

Ok, that worked, here you go...
duckboatonemanmarshboat-Model.jpg


duckboatonemanmarshboat-Modelsectio.jpg


Please don't razz me about the tunnel, that is my buddy's idea and he won't let it go, so we are going to build two, one for him with the absolutely flat bottom and tunnel, and one for me with a very shallow-V bottom, no tunnel. Admit my boat will draw a little more water, but I don't think it will matter.
 
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Nice job.

You can easily pull the complete diagram off the pdf by going up to the upper right hand corner of the pdf file and either copy as text or as a picture. Just copy as picture, drop it into your photo managing program and name it as a jpg. Done deal.
Lou
 
John,

I have been very interested in a marsh boat that could be towed, propelled by small (trolling) motor or propelled with a push pole. Your design looks very interesting, please keep posting progress reports.

How will it be constructed, what benifit is the tunnel and how do you think it will affect its perfomance?

Thanks

John
 
I'll let you know how the tunnel works after launch. I don't think this is the proper application for a tunnel hull, plus at 1.5" I don't think it's deep enough to do anything hydrodynamically, but it adds a little structure to a totally flat bottom. I think we will construct the bottom and low side pieces stitch and glue in one piece, and the very curved deck with narrow, thin sheets of cedar cold molded with epoxy over forms, or foam core over forms, fiberglassing the outside, then remove from the forms, fiberglass the inside and attache it to the lower hull assembly along the chine.
 
Propulsion is man powered, either pole, paddle or walking in shallow water pulling the boat along. I did, however design it with a raised, flat transom in case we ever want to put a little 2-4 hp motor on it.
 
Eric, thanks for the compliment. Now that I look at it I can see my old sailboat experience showing up. That was an unconscious thing, but I can't help but draw streamline shapes and fair curves. Maybe I should build a little sailing version of it with round bilges and flat deck. My buddy and I are definitely going to build at least one over the Christmas break. My buddy's brother who helped build the Snow Goose in record time a few years ago, and his daughter who he built a nice stitch and glue kayak last summer, are all going to be here to help whip this thing out.
JR
 
Hey Ed,
I really like that boat in your Avatar, tell us a little about it. The chined deck and sides would be a lot easier to build than the curved on my plan.
John
 
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