My son, Chase, is 12 years old (2001). He has always talked about having his own "paddle boat". In his 12 year old imagination, I think he pictured pulling it behind his bike to the lake. (Don't laugh, check out this Airstream trailer being pulled by a bike!)

We live 3 blocks from a 220 acre lake. It's in a nice park and has some fair fishing. I fish from shore most of the time. Our lake doesn't really require a boat and I hadn't been interested in buying a fishing boat, even though used Jon boats only cost a few hundred dollars.

Then, during the weekend of July 8, 2001, I found a Web site

Uncle John's General Store

This site had kits to build a Cajun Pirogue, a Skiff and a Jon Boat. I wrote to Uncle John and was amazed that he answered the e mail within minutes. I told him,

"You captured my imagination with your
site and the idea of a father and son project."

The step by step diagrams on his web site made it seem easy. Actually it is easy. This site is the story of a father, a son and a boat. The photos on this page take a while to load, so be patient. As we learn more about the boat, or ad modifications, we'll update this site, so check back every now and then, okay?

I ordered the Jon boat kit and then (at his suggestion), ordered the needed epoxy and fiberglass supplies from Larry Steeves at Raka (http://www.raka.com ).

The materials arrived during the week. Chase and I visited Home Depot and picked up the other materials that aren't included in the kit. Some things we had lying around our house, but our "shop" is pretty humble and not well stocked.

The body of the boat can be built from 1/4" BC plywood or 1/4" Lauan. We chose Lauan because it's cheap and looks good. It's $10.00 a sheet. The wood and some other supplies from Home Depot ran $120.00, and that included odds and ends like sand paper,and a few new saw blades for the circular saw. We also added the stain, lacquer thinner, paint thinner, brushes and other things for the finishing of the boat.

We bought some saw horse angle brackets and some 2 x 4 studs to make a work bench. An extra sheet of Lauan, instead of the required 2, became our work surface and back up in case we messed something up. We are, after all, beginners.

Which brings us to the subject of finances. This is an affordable project:

• The boat kit was $80.00,
• the Fiberglass from RAKA (and the extra things we added in) were $140.00.
• the first Home Depot bill was $120.00
• Follow up trips for disposables like sandpaper of different grits, additional lacquer thinner and paint thinner ran another $50.00

According to the kit, the total weight of the boat will be around 100 pounds and total cost for the materials under $200.00. Our boat and extra odds and ends will total around $350.00, and then there is the trolling motor and the battery. Both add weight and dollars.

Note to novice boat owners: A boat is a little like a Barbie doll, pretty cheap until you look at all the accessories

On Saturday, July 14, we began.

Chase shows off the plans and kit parts from Uncle Johns. The kit included the two transoms, the seats, and plans. The materials from RAKA included the fiberglass tape for the seams, 5 yards of fiberglass cloth for the bottom, Epoxy, rubber gloves, arm protectors, and a few mixing pots and squeegees.

Some people have some of this stuff around the house. Not us. Our experience and power tool selection as limited.

Okay, some some background is in order.

I'm no Bob Villa. I have a few power tools that are home-handy-man grade, a small collection of hand tools, and limited experience. I've build a few walls, a few kid's wooden play structures, and done some tile and plumbing work around the house. My son Chase has built some models and some model rocket kits.

I'm a messy worker. I don't do well at painting -- I end up with lots of paint on me and the drop cloth. Chase inherited that from me too.

So why tackle this project?

Actually, that's exactly why tackle this project:

• it's a challenge,
• not TOO difficult,
• and we end up with a finished product that will be fun to use.

It's small enough to put on top of our van -- or we may find a cheap trailer -- that's another chapter in the story.

The Jon Boat kit builds a boat from 10 foot to 12 feet in length. We arbitrarily settled on on 11'6".

Okay, so how do you make a 12 foot long board from 8 foot long Lauan?

With a scarf joint. I've used the word scarf before, but never knew what it meant. It looks more complicated than it is. Several people suggested using a low angle plane or power plane. We use coarse 60 grit sandpaper in an orbiting sander.

The results were pretty good, although with more time, patience and practice, I bet you could make an almost invisible seam.

Here is the boat in the center stall of our three car garage. We have two cars and the third stall is for the kids toys. The cars are parked in the street this week, like last week.

I saw a photo on the Internet where someone taped down heavy paper on the floor of the work surface. This would have been a great idea. I wish I had seen it a week earlier.

I had decided to fiberglass the bottom of the boat, and now, in hindsight, this is where I would have done the fiberglassing and I would have fiberglassed the sides, too.

Maybe one idea is to glass up to the rub rail (middle).

Fiberglassing of the boat bottom turned out pretty good for a first timer. Mixing the epoxy was simple. The RAKA system uses a 2:1 mix ratio I mixed enough small portions to make it easy to manage. I used the slow hardener, which makes for long dry times, but probably better for me since the most mixing I've done in the past is adding Hershey's syrup to milk to make chocolate milk.

Here is where I got into trouble. The bottom of the boat has runners to protect it when you ground the boat on rocks and sand. I fiberglassed the bottom of the boat first, then attached the wooden runners and then wanted to fiberglass the runners to the bottom.

That was a big mistake.

The fiberglass developed major air pockets and had to be cut off, and the epoxy had a major case of runs/sag overnight. We woke up the next morning to see the bottom 1/2 of the sides coated with epoxy runs. The smarter step would have been to epoxy the runners in place and maybe coat them with some epoxy for protection.

Uncle John has provided lots of e mail support. As I wrote with my silly assed beginner's questions about some of the steps, a patient helpful e-mail would return to me within a few minutes. I've told him more than once that this one is teaching me a lot about what to do in my *next* boat kit project.

This is the view of the boat sides after sanding the sagged epoxy from the top. It's ugly.

The boat was upside down when the epoxy sagged...In this photo, it is right side up.

Much better, a little sanding and a new layer of epoxy and the runs are hidden.

The boat is upside down again in this picture.

The view from inside the boat.

We used epoxy filet in the seams of the seats to the bottom and the bottom to the sides. Then we covered the seams with the 3 inch 6 ounce tape and epoxied the seams.

The urethane camouflages the fiberglass tape, but doesn't hide it. In a painted boat, epoxy could be feathered to a smooth taper like drywall and the paint would hide the seams.

The seat supports will be stained to match the boat, our plan is to leave the seat tops colored to match the rails.

During the step above, where we held the boat together with the bungee cords, one of the things I didn't pay attention to was the true level of the seat tops. When we finally finished the boat, the seats have a slight pitch and yaw to them, but no more than 1/4 inch.

The boat is strong enough to rest on it's side, which made applying the epoxy to the sides much easier and gave a smoother finish.

I lightly brushed epoxy on the side between the rub rail and the side rail.

Chase's brother and sister, Noah and Cara, give the boat a test float in the front yard.

We ended up with 6 coats of MinWax Helmsman Varnish on the interior and 4 coats on the exterior. The bottom is primed and painted with two coats of exterior semi-gloss brown latex.