Building ‘Sharpy’ Part 1

I’ve no idea how long it will take to build ‘Sharpy’, a 15’ sailing sharpie designed by Derek Munnion, but I shall make a start when the timber and marine plywood arrives at my home. I ordered the mahogany and plywood from Robbins* of Bristol, and I expect to have them before the end of next week. Meanwhile I’ve been planning how I can most economically make the shapes of components for the hull. I shall use a handheld jigsaw for cutting the various shapes. From four sheets of 4 millimetre 4 ft by 8 ft of marine plywood to the standard of BS 1088, I shall have to cut out 17 shapes, the largest of them being the central and aft section of the boat’s bottom. The forward section will have to come from another sheet.


I set about finding the best layout for the various bits and pieces by making patterns to the scale of 3 millimetres representing an inch, which is the same scale Derek used for sheets one and two of the building plans. These detailed drawings show how the hull should be built. I found it was easy to trace the shapes directly onto greaseproof paper - proper tracing paper would have been better. After cutting those out I juggled them to fit onto 4 pieces of paper that were 144 millimetres by 288 millimetres. These rectangular pieces of paper represented the sheets of plywood that will be used for making the hull.


Part 2 of this series will be posted in due course.

Links


‘Sharpy Plans’

http://bills-log.blogspot.com/2010/09/sharpy-plans.html

‘Sharpy’

http://bills-log.blogspot.com/2010/09/sharpy.html

‘Sharpy’ 15’ drop-keel Sailing Canoe

http://bills-log.blogspot.com/2010/01/sharpy-sharpy-is-15-by-2-6-drop-keel.html

*Robbins Timber

http://www.robbins.co.uk/