Fabricating Parts, Sources for Tools and Materials, etc.

One of the nice things Ian Farrier supplies with his plans is a complete set of mechanical drawings for all of the special parts that need to be fabricated. You can either take this to a machine shop, or make them yourself. If you decide to make your own fabricated parts, two tools that are IMHO necessary are a metal cutting band saw and a drill press. Harbor Freight makes a suitable band saw that is occasionally on sale for less than $200. If you get one of these, puechase your replacement blades from Grizzly. They cost $10 each and are much better than the replacement blades at Harbor Freight. They also sell a similar saw for about $50 more that is undoubtedly of a higher quality. Go with blades that have 10 and 14 TPI. For a drill press, I used a Craftsman bench mounted 1/3 horsepower model with a ½ inch chuck. It works, but a ½ or ¾ horsepower model would be much better, and if I were buying a new one, that’s what I would get. Boring 5/8″ holes through ½ thick 304 stainless is a lot of work. A drill press vise comes in quite handy too.

Saral makes rolls of carbon paper that can be used to transfer the lines from the full-size patterns to the plywood form frames. It comes in 12 foot rolls which you can find at online art supply stores.

Tooling – They don’t carry 1 1/16″ drill bits at Home Depot. Irwin makes a nice line of large diameter drills at a reasonable cost. Best prices I’ve found so far was from Gizmo’s Industrial (internet). Price is very reasonable, but shipping is slow as
molasses, so be patient.

Cutting oil- there are several kinds, but anything is better than nothing. The stuff that is thick like honey is great for the band saw, and the water soluble or mineral spirit based types help dissipate the heat when drilling stainless.

Stainless steel is no more difficult to weld than mild steel! I used Lincoln Red Baron 316 stainless rod, and had very good luck with it. I used DC reverse polarity, with the amperage on the high end of the recommended range.

Aluminum, on the other hand is VERY difficult to weld. After much experimentation and practice, heating the material first, I was actually able to get the aluminum plates to stick together, but I didn’t have a lot of confidence that I could repeat this reliably,
and It didn’t look very pretty either. Look for someone who has a square wave TIG welder and experience working with thick aluminum. Since I only needed to make a few welded aluminum parts, I could not justify the expense of purchasing the equipment needed to do this myself. If you look, you can also find “miracle rods” for welding aluminum using only a propane or MAP torch. These are actually not too difficult to work with, but I’ve also read that these rods have a high zinc content, and I don’t need to explain what happens to zinc alloys in a saltwater environment! Another problem with these rods is that a weld that looks quite beautiful can be broken quite easily, as there is no real penetration into the host metal. The only way to tell if you’ve made a good weld is by destroying it.

I found a couple of places that carry various SS and aluminum stock. Speedymetals.com and onlinemetals.com. Both of these companies ship very promptly, but they calculate their prices and discounts differently, so it is good to compare. For 316 stainless hardware (nuts and bolts) the best price I found was from American Fastener Corp. in Miami FL. Person I worked with was Val Raun. Price for 316SS 1″ bolts was about half some other suppliers.

Costs – The tooling and materials are a significant expense that I don’t see mentioned too often. True, good tools can be used for other projects, but if a particular piece of equipment is purchased primarily to accomplish a boat-building task, it should probably be included. I also built a building for the project, but since I did most of the work myself, I have ignored this, as I figure it increased my property value by at least as much as I spent. If most of us calculated to the penny the true cost of a boat-building project, including the price of our own labor, I don’t think many of us would ever start. Instead, look at it as a hobby, and a very enjoyable one at that. It’s certainly much more fun than watching TV.

The epoxy I decided to go with is from AeroMarine. It’s a non-blushing cycloaliphatic epoxy that was recommend by a few other builders on the F-Boat forum. Most of the other materials (fiberglass cloth, Corecell foam) I purchased from Noah’s Marine Supplies in Toronto. I went as far as forming my own Marine Supply Company so I could deal directly with wholesalers. Noah’s has consistently underbid everyone else, and Paul Singh has been very responsive to my requests, and very fast getting back to me with quotes. In short, Noah’s has been everything a good suppier should be – and more!