Welcome home Frolic!

Flying Fifteen #87
Built in England 1950
Hot Molded Mahogany Hull
Spruce Spars

A new restoration project has come into Clint Chase Boatbuilder, a personal project of the owner/proprietor and co-owned with Vlado Dresar, a family member and fellow craftsman who lives in Ontario. Although the project is part of the projects at Clint Chase Boatbuilder, she deserves a separate blog. Feel free to follow along at a new blog, The Restoration of Frolic.

A lot of activity at the boat shop!

Carbon oars are in style at Clint Chase Boatbuilder! These are a pair made by Clint's students. They can made at any size, shape, and part of any length oar. They make most sense on 8' or longer oars where outboard weight must be kept to a minimum.

On the Dory design front, the lines are complete. To learn about my design approach, click here.

Other news: coming into the shop will be a vintage Flying Fifteen the building of which was supervised by Uffa Fox himself in the ate 1940s. Photographs will be forthcoming. The plan is to give the boat a total restoration. Everything is orginal: oak spars, Egyptian cotton sails, laminated mahagany hull (varnished).

Quite a few inquiries into Shellback Dinghies have been coming in with one order in place. If interested in this great boat, please let us know!

Slow Beginnings

Since starting to work in my shop "full time", I have yet to put a full day in due to a neck injury and complicated planning to adopt a girl from China. Nevertheless, some light duty work is getting done, namely the modeling of the Deblois Street Dory for a customer, some marketing work (such as starting the blog!), and some prep work for some spar and oar making. We ordered several hundred dollars worth of carbon fiber and other supplies for making the carbon blades with the Vacuum Infusion Process (VIP). More on that later when we get started with infusing the blades.

For now, check out the dory model lines which have been finalized on the model and will be transferred to the plans tomorrow for the customer. Each batten that you see represents the overlap of the planks, the "lap" width, roughly 1". So the lower edge of each batten, made out of 1/4" x 1/8" pine strips, represents the bottom of the plank. They were hot glued on by eye and adjusted until it looked "right". The next step, after drawing these lines on the paper plans, is to draw the construction and sail plans. The customer will be building this Fall.

Dory model and Jig for Birdsmouth Mast

The Deblois Street Dory model is coming together! The approach is to model it at 1/4-scale and line off the planking on the model. These points will be transferred back to a 1/4-scale lofting of the boat and the lines plan will be redrawn to show the chines. A new table of offsets will be made and a couple in Portland will be building the Dory this Fall. Feel free to see a drawing of the Deblois Street Dory by clicking HERE.

In Goat Island Skiff land, preparations are under way to produce Birdsmouth masts as kits or final products, depending on the customers needs. We'll make a Birdsmouth mast for our own Goat, first, and ours may be the first Birdsmouth Mast to be used in a Goat Island Skiff! The plan is to market these to other Goat builders who might not have the time or interest in taking on this project. The picture shows the key to doing this on a semi-production basis, a stave taper jig. A long plane will be used to do the work; the plane sole will follow the hardwood guides and the staves will lie in the "bed" between the guides. The staves will eventually match the guides' width and carry the right taper along their length.

Parts for GIS Kit

A set of high quality plywood parts has been made. The boat will be dry fit and professional quality patterns will be made for creation of a CNC file. Kits are available now for new boatbuilders or seasoned boatbuilders. They will receive a CNC-cut kit that will go together to produce a hull that was professionally "tweaked" to get the fairest lines and best fitting components. In addition to the plywood parts, kits can be assembled for timber component (stem, frames and cleats, gunwales, etc.), epoxy and fiberglass/supplies, and hardware/cordage to help you fit out the boat and get on the water. Orders can be placed by contacting me directly at Clint@ClintChaseBoatbuilder.com