You Should Not Build a Boat Like This || 5 Day Boat Build

this video was sponsored by policy genius previously on bourbon moth woodworking remember this guy michael alm yeah he stopped by the shop and he was like hey jason you think we could build a boat in five days and i said of course all we need to get is a few sheets of plywood and we'll get going so we got that plywood and we cut out a bunch of ribs actually michael cut out a bunch of ribs i just kind of watched then we laid out those ribs in the shape of a boat we had no clue what we were doing we were just winging it and having a lot of fun after we got the shape of the boat all knocked out we cut out the ribs and the internal parts and made a spine then we made some shines made a spine made some shines and then i made a little bow cap at a solid walnut plopped it in there and we cut out a little space for a cockpit do you call it a cockpit on a boat i don't know the place where the captain sits aye aye then i add a little wood to the transom so that we could slap on an outboard motor we also got a steering kit in the mail so that we could retro fit the motor with the steering wheel i made a dashboard we cleaned up and sanded the whole thing and in no time we had this what roughly looked like a boat or the skeleton of a boat or the shape of a boat but that's where we left off last time let's get this thing finished and slide it into the water like an old lady taken aback [Music] so with the entire structural ribbing skeleton of our boat complete the next step was of course to cover the entire thing in plywood now like i mentioned many times before we have no clue what we're doing i don't know if you're supposed to use quarter inch plywood half inch plywood three quarter inch plywood i don't know if you're supposed to fiberglass it or coat it in epoxy we just we're focused on the fact that we're trying to build a boat in five days so we went with quarter inch because this plywood needs to bend a lot we made a pretty curvy boat we decided to start with each side of the boat first get those panels done and then we'll move on to the top and the bottom so we roughly cut out some pieces that were definitely a little bigger than they needed to be for the side panels we slapped them in place held them there with a few clamps and then we traced out the general shape of each side of the boat then we took those panels back over to the work table and we cut out that rough shape with a jigsaw now because our boat is symmetrical at least pretty symmetrical we could use our first piece to trace out for our second piece unfortunately because of the overall size and shape of the boat we could only get one piece out of one full sheet of plywood so we did have to waste a lot of plywood in the making of this boat but i'll hold on to those scrap pieces and make a dollhouse or something for my wife anyways once we got both side panels cut we clamped them back in place just to make sure they fit the way they should again leaving them a little large overhanging on the top and bottom we'll clean that up later then before we hook them on we thought it would be a good idea to throw a full sheet of plywood on the top and trace out the shape for our top panel we just figured this would be easier to do it now rather than do it after we have plywood and the sides on the bottom because then how are we going to get in there to trace out the shape well i guess we still totally could have got in there oh the cockpit that was the thing we couldn't reach inside and trace out where the cockpit is and we wanted to be able to do that so we traced that shape out and we just set that top panel aside then we grabbed some more total boat thickened epoxy thick so to be exact and i lubed up one side of the boat with a ridiculous amount of thickened epoxy then while michael held my bottom and i held the top that sounded funny we just stuck that side panel on there and in true boat building fashion added a ridiculous amount of clamps the top and bottom now if we had time we would just let this sit let the epoxy dry and call it good but we ain't got time for that we're building a boat in five days so we had to do something to be able to move forward and remove the clamps so once again i pulled out the 16 gauge staple gun and i stapled the top and bottom of each side panel to those convenient shines we put in there this will hold the panels in place while the epoxy dries and will allow us to remove the clamps and keep moving forward speaking of removing clamps we removed the clamps and we kept moving forward then with one side done we did the exact same thing to the other side a ridiculous amount of total boats thickened epoxy and we slapped that panel in place easy peasy epoxy squeezy then because we left the top and the bottom long on those panels i just took a flush trim router bit and i hit both sides with the bit to make it nice and smooth well as smooth as we could it is a curved haul so you couldn't get it absolutely perfect with the flush trim bit but we got as close as we could on the top and bottom and we did a little finagling with the hand sander and eventually i even pulled out the japanese pole saw and trimmed off a bit long story short we got it all nice and flush to the chines in the end and we were ready to start working on our bottom panel now from the moment we decided to build this boat the bottom panel was the thing i was the most nervous about because it's got to bend a lot the bottom curves quite a bit from back to front and not only does it curve it twists and i didn't even know if quarter inch plywood would do that without breaking it was all kind of a mystery so we decided to make a template first out of a scrap piece of quarter inch plywood i had this scrap piece of white oak just laying around so we just threw that on there and started bending it the tricky part was to get a nice line that would follow that center little rib spine thing because as you can see it's not a straight line it's got a curve and a funky way so we tried a chalk line that didn't work we tried a bendy piece of wood that kind of worked and then michael just traced out the outside getting a little too friendly as he did once we roughly had the shape that we thought was right we cut the entire thing out with the jigsaw and by we i mean michael because if you haven't noticed he does most of the work on this boat and i just kind of stand around and watch him once we had our template piece cut out to what we thought was the right shape we plopped it back on the bottom and we tried to push it down but the problem is this boat bends so much that it's hard to get it down far enough to really get an accurate measurement so we had to come up with some way to hold that piece in place while we got a good straight line so we went out and bought some eye bolts and we bolted them in on either side then we used some ratchet straps from the inside that we could kind of weave around the boat and ratchet that piece down so it's nice and tight to the structure of the boat then like geniuses we are we pulled out a flippin laser that's right laser beams the laser was perfect because it didn't move around like the chalk line or the bendy piece of wood and it allowed us to get a nice perfect line along that center spine once we had that shape the way we wanted it we used the template to trace out that shape onto an actual piece of marine grade plywood then we cut most of that shape with the track saw just to eliminate the amount of work we had to do with the jigsaw and once we had a smaller piece we finished up cutting our final curves and bends with the jigsaw and by we i mean me because i do most of the work around here michael just kind of stands around and watches but thankfully the laser did the trick and we were pretty confident that our bottom panel at least this one was the right shape so back to more thickened epoxy and a lot of squirting and squeezing and we plopped that panel in place now this is a tricky thing to hold down because it's got so much bend to it that there's a lot of tension at the front so we put as many clamps as we could on one side eventually the curve got so great that the clamps just wouldn't stay and then michael using his extreme strength just pushed that panel down the best he could while i sank in some staples to hold it nice and firm i think we did have to use a couple screws at the very front just to give us a little more holding power but that's okay all these staples and screws will be completely covered with trim so you're not going to see them and you won't even know they're there while i stapled mike removed all the clamps and we were ready to get rockin on panel two we decided to throw our first template back up there just to double check and make sure that the second panel would be the same shape as the first panel because we couldn't clamp it down we just screwed it in place so that we could get a nice feel for whether or not it would fit and what do you know it almost fit absolutely perfect i was amazed how well this seam was going to come together on the bottom so with that confidence we took our template traced out another piece for our second panel and we got to work well i mean we didn't get to work then we've been working this whole time i mean we got to work on the second you know what i mean so with our second panel cut out we lubed up the whole thing again with some more total boat thickened epoxy and we plopped it in place now unlike the first panel we couldn't clamp the inner seam in place while we worked so it was just straight to the staple gun i started at the back and slowly worked my way forward making sure that seam was nice and tight and mike's muscles at this point had to have been aching because he was really pushing that thing down for me but in no time we had the bottom completely skinned with a beautiful layer of quarter inch akume ply yes we left the sides long on this as well don't worry we'll come back and trim those down here in a bit but it was looking good and we were pretty happy it looks so sexy awesome that's so cool all right guys get a hold of yourselves it's not done yet now with the boat flipped over we did something that might have been unnecessary but i just wanted to do it for reassurance and that was to take some 3m 5200 sealant adhesive stuff and we basically used it as caulking on every internal seam just to make sure that everything was sealed and we weren't going to have any leaks you're not going to see the inside of this boat at all once it's skinned so we weren't really worried about it looking too ugly with that done we took it back over to the work table and we just started sanding everything smooth and really cleaning up all those seams the best we could to prepare for trimming the entire thing out mike hit it with the sander and i just went crazy with the japanese pole saw cutting off bits and bobs until well it started looking more and more like a nice clean sexy boat that it is i have to say if we had to pick a winner of a tool on this project well it'd probably be the jigsaw but a close second would be the flush cut router trim bit we used this thing to clean up practically every little bit and section of this boat and it worked awesome although the bit did start to get caked and thickened epoxy and start to not work as well but that's neither here or there i'm willing to sacrifice one bit for the building of this boat with the boat all skinned except for the top we decided to start adding some trim so i milled down a bunch of mahogany since we're using akume marine grade plywood which is in the mahogany family mahogany trim just seemed like a good choice now because of the drastic curve of the boat we couldn't do long runs because we couldn't get even quarter inch mahogany to bend that way now we could have steam bent some pieces to get them to fit that curve but five day boat build guys we just gotta do what we gotta do so instead of using long runs we used several littler sections and we just spliced them together with some total boat epoxy of course there on my first attempt to tack this in i hit a screw and almost took off my finger to hold the pieces on i switched to a 23 gauge finish nailer just to hold them in place until the epoxy cured this was a great option because we didn't even have to fill the holes when we were done because they were so tiny and you have to remember there is a crazy amount of thickened epoxy on the bottom of these trim pieces so any holes i make in the trim are going to immediately be filled in with that thickened epoxy although it does seem a little weird to put a bunch of holes in the bottom of a boat but hey i think it's gonna float we'll just have to wait and see trimming the bottom is as far as we got on the night of day three so on the morning of day four we came out determined to get our top on and the rest of the boat trimmed and start laying down varnish so before we flipped over the boat to start working on the other trim i got out the rotex and i sanded everything down smooth so that we would be ready to roll for our next pieces of trim so we flipped the boat over to expose the inside and we were just about ready to put the top on when i had a realization if we put the top on then the entire inside of this boat would just be raw exposed plywood and although there's not going to be a whole lot of water on the inside of this boat we hope i still didn't like leaving it raw so before we put the top on i loaded up a bottle of teak oil and we soaked the inside of this boat from bow to stern with just a ridiculous amount of teak oil we weren't too concerned with how it looked we were more concerned with just getting at least one small layer of protection on all that exposed plywood i want to take just a quick break from the boat build to tell you about the sponsor of this video policy genius now i'm going to get a little serious with you because this is a 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trickiest thing to staple because once we put the top on obviously we couldn't see where any of our ribs were but we pre-marked where they were on the outside so once we had a few staples in the top we used a chalk line to put a line right down the center of each rib so that we could find them again to add staples where we needed them to go the other issue we had is trying to cover up these staples because we're not going to trim out the entire thing we're just going to trim out the sides and then around the cockpit so we tried to limit the amount of staples we put in the top as much as possible of course we couldn't do that so we had to have two lines of exposed staples on either side but instead of just hammering them in willy nilly i had mike mark out a perfect little mark every two inches along both sides this way our staples would look more intentional and follow a uniform pattern so while he marked those out i just kept throwing in staples around the cockpit where things will be trimmed up then once i had the interior all stapled i just started following along behind mike stapling on each one of his pre-determined little marks it actually kind of made a really cool stitched pattern on both sides we filled all these staples eventually with wood filler and it actually looks great i don't think anyone would be like hey man what's with all those exposed staples after getting everything stapled once again it was back to that good old trim flush cut router bit to clean everything up nice and smooth by far the most satisfying thing to use the trim router on was our cockpit we just loosely cut out a hole so we could get in there and then zip zip zoop we cut the whole thing out with that trim router gosh i love that tool then with our top panel on it was back to getting everything trimmed up more mahogany more thickened epoxy and more 23 gauge brad nails at times this was a frustrating process because the curve of the boat just fought us every step of the way but we went slow and it was so satisfying in the end to watch this thing go from a bunch of plywood panels just kind of hooked together to what was starting to look like a nice clean trimmed out boat there's the trim router again just flush cutting everything nice and purty the last thing that we had to trim out was of course around our cockpit so i cut some more pieces of mahogany and we laid them in there nice and tight tacking them down once again with that thickened epoxy and the 23 gauge brad nailer and then we were almost ready to get some finish on this thing but because we're on a time crunch we had to figure out a way that we could finish all of the sides of the boat at the same time not have to do the top wait for it to dry flip it over do the bottom wait for it to dry flip it over and do the top you get the picture so we thought suspending it from the ceiling would be the easiest now we didn't want to just drill a bunch of random holes in the boat so we added this little ring at the nose we thought it looked pretty boaty so we'd get away with it i mean we did get it at a boat store after all so with our ring nice and secure in the front with some thickened epoxy it was time to do my all-time favorite thing you guys know what it is sand our life away we both got out some sanders and some sandpaper and we just started sanding mike filled a few staple holes i sanded i filled a few holes he sanded it was a process once we did the top we flipped it over and yep you guessed it more sanding on the bottom now in a normal boat build i would like to spend a good week very carefully and meticulously sanding every little part of this but since we're doing this in five days we had about an hour to get the whole thing sanded but hey it looks pretty darn sweet doesn't it man i can't wait to get this in the water with the whole thing sanded it was finally time to suspend it from the ceiling and get ready to lay down some varnish the nice thing was this boat is still insanely light we estimate about 60 pounds at this point so we weren't too worried about hanging it from the ceiling i just put some ratchet straps onto some hooks that were in studs wheeled it over hooked it on in the front with our nice little bow ring i made this little wood piece to just sit underneath the cockpit and just like that it was hanging and ready for some total boat lust that's right we're just gonna smear lust all over the boat we thinned down the varnish with a little total boat brushing thinner stuff then michael started rolling and i followed right behind him with a brush tipping everything out now i'm sure boat builders are gonna watch this varnish job and cringe yes we probably should have cleaned my entire shop first to make sure there was no dust in the air and really done a crazy good job we probably should have done one coat a day let it cure and then sand but we didn't have time but the nice thing about the total boat lust is that you can reapply within an hour so even though it's probably not the most professional job we were able to lay a lot of coats down in a relatively short amount of time after doing two or three coats of varnish we decided that this bad boy needed a name so i called my friend ryan who lives down the street and owns a sign company and he printed out this vinyl decal that michael and i designed on the computer we figured since it's a cocktail racer it needs a cocktail type name the old fashioned just seemed like the perfect fitting name to christen this old vessel and the decal looks pretty darn sweet for designing it in five minutes just using clipart but hey you gotta do what you gotta do for a five-day boat build and in a few hours more like half a day and part of a night we had the entire thing varnished and we were ready to start working on that engine so after letting the varnish completely cure we very carefully slid the table underneath it unhooked it and wheeled it to the other side of the shop now i'm going to tell you right now that both michael and i know absolutely nothing about motors and mechanics and boats or anything like that so you might laugh a lot during this next part but the important thing is we're just getting this done the steering setup we ordered on amazon basically is the steering column with a cable when you turn the steering wheel the cable pulls and loosens and it extends that rod back and forward so the idea is that you transfer that motion from that rod moving back and forward somehow onto the motor to turn the motor backwards and forwards or left to right to steer the boat so we installed the steering column into the bracket that comes with it we're not cool enough to like make up our own bracket we just bolted the parts in place and we plopped the steering wheel on that was the easy part the harder part was trying to figure out how we were going to transfer this motion of the rod somehow to hook into the motor now this is a horrible angle but as you can see you turn the wheel and that rod goes in and out i'll show you a better view later on and then we unboxed the motor we ordered on amazon now i mentioned in the first video this isn't the motor we wanted this is literally the only motor that we could get our hands on in such a short time period it was the only motor on amazon that would come in two days it is a fun chick 3.6 horsepower outboard motor yeah i never heard of a fun chick either and we would have liked to have more than 3.6 horsepowers but you got to do what you got to do in five days so we just clamped that thing on there and then i cut off this whole dealy bob i think it's like a throttle and what you're supposed to use to steer but it was in our way and bouncing around and i figured i mean i don't think we need it so chop chop there it goes next we had to figure out a way to mount that rod right below the motor so i just made a quick little bracket with some hose clamps and a few pieces of mahogany and we just tightened that thing on there as you can see when you turn the steering wheel that rod moves you turn it one way it moves one way you turn it the other way it moves the other way so we needed a bracket to hold that rod to the motor enter my neighbor justin rainfall projects if you're not following him on youtube go do it his channel is awesome and he is a whiz when it comes to just fabricating random things so that's exactly what we had him do fabricate a random part to hook that rod to our motor don't worry i'll show you exactly how it works later on but for now we got a few more things to do the boat for example michael thought we just had some extra time on our hands and that the dashboard needed a little bit of an upgrade if you didn't know this about michael ulm he is the king of what is called patterned plywood it's a way of cutting plywood into little tiny strips gluing them back together cutting them into more tiny strips and gluing them back together again until you get a wonderful pattern i'm not going to show you every step of how he does it because you can watch that over on his channel he'll walk you through the entire process nice and easy but in just about an hour he whipped up this cool patterned plywood dashboard which really jazzed up the thing with that installed it was back to just fitting the boat with a bunch of random things we picked up at the marine store like these sweet stainless steel tube handrails don't those look pretty nice on either side huh it's looking like a boat then with that done we started installing just a really simple floorboard we needed a place to kneel or sit down on so we wouldn't be sitting on those ribs that wouldn't be comfortable then with the floorboards installed michael hit that pattern plywood with just a little varnish to make that pattern just pop out and look sexy now i mentioned i'd show you how this whole bracket thing works you can see it there on the boat the metal plate right here that's what justin fabbed up it attaches to the motor itself then i just bent some flat stock pieces that we bolted onto that tube to transfer that motion and we added a nice simple throttle so now when you turn the steering wheel left to right that tube goes out and in and it transfers that power to the motor making the motor go left and right and would you guys flip and believe that with that the boat is done and this little foreman was pretty darn excited he really thought the boat was built just for him i mean to be fair it is the size of a boat that you would think would be built for a six-year-old there was just one last thing that needed to be done we had a slap on a bumper sticker river tables just say no if you're wondering what to actually do with epoxy yeah you're supposed to build flipping boats with it not porting ugly colorful streams down the center of live edge wood stop doing that sometimes you choose a project [Music] but sometimes it almost seems like the project chooses you [Music] sometimes when you finish build it almost seems like it was meant to be built all along like it was your destiny to be at this point in time doing this thing having this experience yeah this wasn't one of those projects this thing we just slapped together in the course of five days so let's get it in the water and see if it actually floats this is it don't get scared now hey what do you know not bad for five days and yes i did just wipe my wet hands on my butt but the real question is are 3.6 horses enough to make this thing glide over the water with the greatest of these we turned it on started it up and i hopped in ready to set out not knowing if i was gonna go anywhere or if i was gonna do a loop-de-look it could be anybody's guess mike was nice enough to push me off and i waited to start the propeller until his ankles were well clear and i hit that throttle and what happened was well this yeah it moves forward it goes nicely through the water it floats very well but we figured the top speed was right around maybe 10 miles an hour if that it was clear that 3.6 horsepower just wasn't enough to really make this puppy dance but the important thing was it's a boat a boat that we built in only five freaking days it was a crazy time it was a fun time and man it was an exhausting time i slept for like a week after we finished this thing when i was done it was time for michael to go i thought that maybe because he was quite a bit lighter than me he would have a little more success getting it on plane and really opening this puppy up but now it was about the same it just put it around i mean it's a lot of fun but don't be surprised if you see another video with me and michael in the future where we upgrade this bad boy with a legitimate engine 3.6 horsepower nah let's go for 10. i bet that'll turn this thing up a notch after me and mike both had a turn it was time for somebody else to get a ride unfortunately there's just not a lot of room in this thing it's definitely more of a one-person type ordeal but the foreman's only six and he insisted on climbing aboard so we set off into the sunset just me the foreman on the open sea actually it's a lake but you get the picture after driving around for a little bit with him sitting on my lap i decided to you know get a little wild and crazy maybe stand up do some tricks really trying to impress the crowd when i built my first boat it took me three and a half months and it was a project that i had dreamed about since i was a little boy when i built this one it was a project that i thought about for five minutes before we got started the fact that i've now built two boats within the span of a year is just kind of nuts and i would like to say i won't be building another one anytime soon but i gotta admit i'm actually really starting to like the whole boat building thing so who knows what'll happen my point is this whether you've been planning a build for five years or five minutes get in there have fun give it your all and whatever you do don't forget it take some time to enjoy it when you're all finished [Music] [Music] hey well we did it five day boat build and i don't know about you i think it looks pretty darn good for five days if you haven't already go over to michael alms youtube channel almfab i will link it somewhere around this vicinity and you can watch both of his videos part one and two on this exact same build he's got a little bit of a different filming style than me so they're practically completely different videos so go check that out subscribe down below go follow me on instagram and facebook check out my patreon link in the video description and uh i think that's about it [Music] um [Music] yes

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 358,875

Rating: 4.902041 out of 5

Keywords: You Should Not Build a Boat Like This, 5 Day Boat Build, boat building, build a boat, wooden boat building, boat plans, wooden boat plans, plywood boat plans, wood boat plans, plywood boat, how to build a boat, wooden boat, easy boat plans, how to make a boat, how to make a plywood boat, building a boat, wood boat building, im building a boat, diy boat, drift boat, boat build, diy boats, boat building wood, wooden boat build, wooden drift boat, home built boats, diy, yes

Id: 2YDi3bqI4pY

Length: 36min 46sec (2206 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021