Boat Builder Central

I was absolutely planning to work up a BOM ahead, but didn't want to go full engineer nerd about saying it. My actual thought is because I do a ton of CAD modeling, I was going to take the plans as provided and reverse engineer them into CAD. That way I can play with layouts and what bits I'll need....

That makes perfect sense. And I wasn't intending to skimp on the quality of the materials, I've learned too much about composites to do that. My question was mainly to see if the sheets listed were those needed to complete the hull only, or if they included the disposable bits as well. It sounds lik...

Awesome guys, thanks for the sanity check on the costs. I was looking at the materials, and trying to make an educated guess at the costs. I was assuming it'd be in the 10-12,000 USD range for a 17' boat, and it looks like I was pretty close really. Buying a donor boat is a clever approach, I hadn't...

A center console C17... I didn’t even know that was an option. I looked at the C17, but wrote it off as it was far more expensive and I didn’t want the little cabin. But I really like the look of it with the console. If you don’t mind my asking... about how much did you spend on your build? I know c...

Nice looking boat, good work! I can see what you mean, it does list a bit with you on the gunwale. But really, it's not that big of a swing. And there appears to be plenty of freeboard left. Did you use the optional 6" side extension? My concern comes from some boats I've been on in the past wh...

I don't know if I'm concerned about the FS17 being too small per se, rather I wonder if it's well suited to my purpose from a stability standpoint. I don't want a boat that's going to be rocking all over the place when I slow down or stop to check or drop pots. As long as it can handle a couple feet...

I'm not saying that I'd build these in foam, I can see that being a real challenge. The car we built was done with extreme attention to weight, so we ran a very thin foam core that was resin permeable. It's a good approach for what we were doing then (layup in a hard tooled mold), but I'd stick to p...

Hi Jeff, Thank for the input. I'm not familiar with the JM boats, is that a series or shorthand for something? I've looked at a number of other builds, and I'm not really intimidated by what I've seen there. Though that could be naivety talking, I'll admit that. I grew up doing woodworking with my m...

Hello All, I've wanted to build my own boat for a long time, but never was in a place to do this financially. But now I think I'm in a place to finally start looking at this seriously. I want this to be a project my kids can "work" on with me as a way to build memories, and also so they un...