When I was a kid in the 70s, my parents had a couple books by Ben Hunt full of Indian crafts and camp gadgets AND one very appealing boat (see below), at least to a six year old (and old-man version of me too). In 1998, I wanted to build my first boat, and that seemed like a very doable thing with this design.
As you can see in the plans, you cut a couple corners off of two 16' pieces of 1x12 shelving, bend those and plank the bottom. I used 3/4 plywood for the bottom instead of the sawn lumber shown in the original, and the thing weighed pretty heavy. My wife and I could just get it on top of our subaru to take to the lake. Here's the only picture I know of it. It was glued and screwed, no fiberglass, just some caulk and paint.
We moved away from Georgia shortly after and I gave it to some boys in the scout troop I worked with there, and they took it fishing all the time. One of them ended up joining the navy, so I'm not sure if I did a good thing or not.
If I were going to do it again I'd probably:
use 1/4 plywood instead of 3/4 for the bottom and shelving for the sides to save some weight and money
fiberglass tape the joints (OR, more likely, do a "poor man's fiberglass" glueing/embeding fabric into paint to the hull and painting that)
curve the bottom to get some rocker instead of the flat bottom - I think it would go a little easier
maybe add a little sprit sail, leeboard and rudder
In 2006 we built a pirogue - a type of flat bottom canoe common in the swamps of Louisiana. This one took two sheets of 1/4 plywood and maybe 60' of 3" fiberglass tape and a gallon and a half of fiberglass resin - all told, less than $100. Everything came from Lowes, so it's polyester resin, which most boat builders won't touch, but it still lasted ten years, half of that time lying outside in the sun. We had a lot of fun with it. I always sat on the bottom, but you could make a seat or sit on a pfd. Eventually the sun broke down the brushed on resin and I cut it up and took it to the dump.
To make a pirogue like this:
cut two triangular stems for the front and the back of the pirogue. I always start with a 4x4 and use the table saw to cut a step the width of the plywood so that everything comes out flush
take two sheets of 1/4" plywood and cut two strips 11" wide from each long side - result: 4 pieces 11x96 & 2 pieces 26x96
cut the bottom corners off the skinny pieces to get the angle and flare right - I forget the angle, just eyeball it
join matching pieces so that you have 2 pieces 11x192 (the sides) and one piece 26x192 (the bottom). You can either use butt blocks or scarf these joints
glue and screw the sides to the stems and separate the sides with a stick to get the flare you want
turn it upside down and lay the bottom on top. Trace on the underside of the bottom where the outside of the sides touch the bottom
cut those marks, lay the bottom in and ducttape it all together on the inside (if you get to it)
fiberglass tape the outside and brush the whole thing with resin
after its dry, flip it over and tape and brush the inside
Back in July of 2014, one of my sons wanted to build a boat, and a puddle duck racer seemed like a great first boat for him to build. The plans, and lots of other info, are freely available at http://www.pdracer.com/. One sheet of 1/4" for the bottom, and one sheet for the rest.
Here's ours. I had an old laser sail and clipped the top to make a spritsail - mostly for safety so nobody would conked with a boom, but also to try it out. Here he's underway just holding the clew before we rigged a sheet up -we're not very good at waiting...
Laugh if you want, but its a respectable ride, and a great first boat to build and to learn to sail in.
A "sharpie" is an old school work/fishing boat that is cheap and easy to build and that will hold a ton of weight.
I found the plans on the excellent site simplicityboats.com at http://www.simplicityboats.com/LCB.htm. I just realized he calls for 4 sheets of 1/4" ply, I ended up using 1/2" - whatever. Thicker ply means you don't need as much bracing, and I didn't put much.
I knocked it out over Christmas break of 2012. one of the pics is shortly after I had it roughed out and primed, but not painted - yea I know, but we couldn't wait...
I rowed the thing all over the little lake - once even across the lake in the middle of the night when I could see a yard across the lake on fire. Nobody else had seen it so I put it out with a fire rake and a five gallon bucket, called the fire dept for a mop-up spray from the fire truck and rowed back home.
After about a year I repainted it again and added a roof with fringe and a faked-up smoke stack so it would look like an old steam launch. It even had a "faux-hogany" foredeck, made out of strips of luan, half of them stained dark. Eventually bottom rot got it where the paint had gotten scratched off, or maybe where the skeg was attached. That's ok, it just means I get to build another one! If I had really wanted it to last I would have glassed the whole bottom instead of just the joints. However, that would have doubled the weight and maybe tripled the $200 I had in it.
Sometimes ideas work out like you think, sometimes they're just ideas...
I got interested in the game called the "one sheet boat" and bought a single piece of luan from Lowes. Using the excellent free software from http://carlsondesign.com/projects/hull-designer/ that designs boat hulls (unfortunately it only works on older versions of MS Windows), I laid out the flat pieces necessary to build a complex 3-D shape and drew up a v-bottomed scow and knocked it together. It floats, it works, but it's pretty tender. It's up on my office wall at work, too.
When our first grandchild was born in 2019, our 2nd son asked for a boat like crib.
There are lots of reasons to be on the water. Slowing down and looking around at the world might be one of the best of reasons. Whether you're bobbing in a backyard pond or a floating leisurely down a lazy river, the water renews us in a way that few other activities will.
I wanted something with
a cabin big enough to sleep two,
small enough to trailer and handle by myself
something that minimized wood and material use
something that maximized interior space.
With a job and a large family and my commitments as a scoutmaster, a fancy craft with twenty layers of varnish didn't fit my time or budget constraints. Inspired by the designs and philosophy of Philip Thiel and Jim Michalak, I doodled plans on napkins and in CAD and made lots of little paper models. This is kinda funny looking - like a pelican, but it gets the job done.
The result uses four sheets of 1/2” plywood from the builder supply, plus scraps from the shop, joints taped. The cabin is made from two sheets of coroplast to save weight and cost. The cabin windows are two kitchen cabinet doors leftover from a recent remodel. I usually row it, but have added a battery, a trolling motor, a bilge pump, lights and solar panels. LOA 15’7”, beam 5’, headroom 4’, weight prob a tad over 250 pounds.