Posted by Joe McElroy on September 05, 1998 at 11:05:43:
In Reply to: GLEN-L 17 cost and time posted by james on January 23, 1998 at 12:45:39:
: I started mine in 1978 and built in my spare
time. The boat was essentially done in a year.
The thing that takes the most time and effort is
the finishing, especially on the interior. If I
were doing it over I would finish the interior
parts before assembling them. I see this done
with larger boats in epoxy and it seems to be a
real time saver. I have used the System Three
expoxies and find them very mild in terms of skin
reactions (I am sensitized). Epoxies vary a lot in
how much they bother me. My impression is that it
has to do with how volatile the hardners are.
I can't tell you much about present day cost, but
I cut some corners on plywood that I shouldn't
have by using A/C on some non-structural parts like
lockers and such. I have regretted this. We have
about $1200 in our boat including trailer and a
1975 Honda outboard which I rebuilt. I was able
find some "shop grade" marine plywood for the
hull that worked quite well. It had problems on
the edges, but you almost always cut off the edges
on a boat anyway.
I should tell you that I just launched this boat
for the first time yesterday! Though 20 years
may seem like a long time for a project, we never
really regretted starting it. There were simply
other priorities at the time. Now we have two
kids old enough to be excited about the boat, and
they will have enough patience to deal with the
long waits at the boat ramps. We built several
hand launch boats in the mean time, and they were
more useful to us at a time when we didn't have
a large amount of spare time to wait in the
Seattle area's long lines at the ramps. It is
also nice to be able to just drop a boat in
anywhere. Now we are ready for some expeditions
that a larger boat will allow.