by Weston Farmer
How to build a strip boat.
LOQ 14 FT., BEAM 501/2 IN.,DRAFT 51/2 IN., WEIGHT 155 LBS.
Whether you cruise along the rockbound coast of Maine or on the mellifluous waters of the Chattahootchee, chances are you’ve iidden in a strip boat. They’re everywhere. And there is good reason for this. Time was when boatbuilders could spile a plank and fay a sawn frame, and thought nothing of building up a complete planked and framed-out clinker hull in one day for eight bucks. But now—-well, since anybody can nail one strip to another all day long, the boss hands a crew of two a bunch of slats, a transom, stem and keel, a power sander and says, “Last man done is a monkey’s uncle!” And the art of boatbuilding becomes a nailing contest. Which is just as well, I guess. What with a lot of things in the world being bastardized and watered down, it probably is good that the strip boat holds up. It has a rugged hull, of true boat shape, and one that requires a minimum of preparation for building since it fairs itself as you build and there is little need for lofting. The theory of the strip boat is so simple that just about anybody can grasp it. You have a transom, naturally, and a keel with an inside rabbet, and a stem. The girths are all equal in that portion of the hull where strips apply—-any differences in hull girth from the lower edge of the strips down to the rabbet are absorbed in one wide plank called the shutter, or stealer. To reverse the illustration: the stealer is fastened to the rabbet, and from that point up to the sheer, all the planking is in narrow strips, edge-nailed to each other, with girths from shutter or stealer to the sheer line all equal at each mold station. To provide a boat of this simple construction I have designed and built Scamper.
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