74' Steel Boat Build, Front Yard, Tulsa ?!?

[dannc]

Dan, you say most homebuilders fail. How could you even know that? I've tried to find stats on how many home builds there have been, and how many failures, but cant find any. Did you?

You won't find stats. You pick it up here and there. There is no one tracking this but I have read many a book on home building boats and used to be a member of the Metal Boat Society(MBS). Heck, I still might be but the MBS website had major problems for years so I stopped reading. There was much discussion on their website about building your own boat.

The boat building books would mention how many start the build but do not finish.

The MBS magazine would often, if not always, have/had unfinished boats for sale. These boats will be in various states of completeness and build quality. I have followed home building blogs and most have not finished. The blog simply stops getting updated. I count my father's desire to build our boat in this as well. We started the site prep work and he bought the building plans, which were not ,and are not, cheap. We never started actually building the boat before he saw sense and just bought a boat so we could go sailing.

Building your own boat was the thing to do in the 70's and 80's. I do remember one guy that finished his boat back then. He spent something like 10 years building his cement boat and did get it in the water. I wish I knew what happened to that boat. Can't imagine that owner would still be alive.

The rule of thumb, for metal boats at least, is that it takes an hour of work for every four pounds of boat. For the boats we have looked at building, it will take 6-8 years, of 40 hour work weeks with 50 weeks in a year. That is one person working full time on the boat. How many people can work full time on the boat and hold down a job?

If one works 20 hours a week on the boat, while having a full time job, the time to build is 12-16 years. Not many people are going to be able to sustain that work effort with while working a full or part time job. Even if one had the money to NOT work to support oneself and the boat build, 6-8 years is a ALONG time.

I read one blog where the guy did finish his boat. Mostly. It was finished so that the boat could go sailing but the build was not 100% complete. He worked on the boat for 30 years. Yes, 30 years. Three decades and there was still work to do.

Building the hull is the easy part. It is roughly 10-20% of the cost in time and money to build the boat. This is why so many unfinished home built boats are just the hull. The home builder gets a small part of the boat done, at a great time cost, and stops for a variety of reasons.

Lets look at this a different way. If it takes eight years for one person working full time to build the boat, then lets get more people working on the boat!

That is what one successful home builder did. He hired out the welding of the hull to speed things up but he, his wife, and just a little help from friends built the boat. I do mean a little help. Not a lot time wise. By the rule of thumb, it would take eight years to build his boat and it took them eight years BUT with more than one person helping the build. However, the time frame does NOT include the time they spent getting to the point of actually building the boat.

They have a great boat.

Building a boat takes a great deal of money, time and a variety of skills that most people did not possess. That means one has to spend more time and money learning these skills, hiring out the job to people with the skills(more money but faster), or hacking the work. There is no escaping this reality.

Later,
Dan

 

[Art]

"Professional" boat builders adjust "ballast" weights and their placements in boats that they have designed, miniature scale tested, built and then launched. Especially, if it is a custom one-off.

IMO - this fellow has every right to also do his pre-planning and then building and then launch. Sure... it is true he did not correctly follow all safety items while building and sure... there should be some insurance coverage ready in case of failure upon launch. But, damn - has it come to the point wherein the processes of heart felt creativity is no longer allowed without supreme overloads of legal restrictions snuffing out our creative juices before we can even finish projects? Are we all to become amatrons that simply "follow the rules" defined as "best" by huge corps, government agencies and lawyer-groups?

Undue restrictions do not work well in my world. How bout you... you like to be unduly restricted?

Let this guy live and finish his much planned for and worked toward project. I cheerlead his endeavor follow-through!

 

[BandB]

No I didnt see any videos by him, but I wont condemn him without knowing if he has the skills to calculate and build this boat.

If you haven't watched the videos then how do you defend him then? I've watched them and wouldn't trust him to build a toy boat for me. Is his welding ok? I don't know, but I do know he takes no safety precautions and uses methods that aren't appropriate and so I would worry about shortcuts in other ways. He then took the boat to the yard without it being nearly finished and without insurance. Other shortcuts. I've done my homework before forming an opinion.

 

[ktdtx]

I have only watched a couple videos, apparently not the one where he earns the title "Asshat" and I applaud his vision, dedication and the commitment to do this while he has a full time job.
Hope he succeeds.

 

[dannc]

...We dont know if he did the very same as they did...calculate. Maybe he knows how to so that for this much smaller boat. Or, maybe he worked from a blueprint made by a naval architect. I see lots of people condemn him even though they dont know any of these question.

I watched the early blogs. Doug built the boat with the help of a guy who thinks that boats should be built using a certain technique.

The technique that was used to built the boat has only been used by home builders and one commercial boat builder that I know about. The vast majority of boat builders, home builder or professional, do NOT use this technique. I would not want a boat built in this way.

I never heard Doug mention which scantling rules he used to design/build the boat. Have you heard him mention this?

Out of curiosity, I searched and this is what I found about the boat design, Build Log - thru 2011 - SV Seeker

Paul’s boat is a perfect example of what Kay and I had been looking for. And Jack Carson and Monica live part of the year on Bella Via so they understood what we needed. Jack also proved to be flexible and open to discussing ideas. That’s unfortunately hard to find among most boat designers, and boat builders for that matter. There is a lot of entrenched thinking out there.

So our plans called for junk design with a cargo hull for a shop and a full pilot house. Jack’s job was to get the hull shape with the required space. No more that that. The interior of the hull would be divided into forward cabin, cargo hold, engine room, aft cabin and a big pilot house would ride on top.

Originally we were planning to build in 3/8 inch aluminum, but that switched to 1/4 inch steel. You can debate aluminum or steel for days, but the bottom line is that for a work boat, each have their good side. At Jacks suggestion we also dropped plans for a center lifting keel in exchange for twin bilge keels. The draft will be about 5 1/2 ft, but it is a simpler hull to build and and maintain.

To create our plans, Jack started with a piece of paper that had the 64ft hull drawn on it in 1″ to 1′ scale. He then made some changes, transferred the drawing to sign board, cut it out, folded it up, glued the seams, took measurements, ran some calculations, adjusted the original drawing and did it again. Three models latter he was done. No CAD, no CAM, no Computer, “very caveman” as he said.

Best I could find is the Carson is an artist, had built his own boat and lived on said boat.

Later,
Dan

 

[JWellington]

You won't find stats. You pick it up here and there. There is no one tracking this but I have read many a book on home building boats and used to be a member of the Metal Boat Society(MBS). Heck, I still might be but the MBS website had major problems for years so I stopped reading. There was much discussion on their website about building your own boat.

The boat building books would mention how many start the build but do not finish.

The MBS magazine would often, if not always, have/had unfinished boats for sale. These boats will be in various states of completeness and build quality. I have followed home building blogs and most have not finished. The blog simply stops getting updated. I count my father's desire to build our boat in this as well. We started the site prep work and he bought the building plans, which were not ,and are not, cheap. We never started actually building the boat before he saw sense and just bought a boat so we could go sailing.

Building your own boat was the thing to do in the 70's and 80's. I do remember one guy that finished his boat back then. He spent something like 10 years building his cement boat and did get it in the water. I wish I knew what happened to that boat. Can't imagine that owner would still be alive.

The rule of thumb, for metal boats at least, is that it takes an hour of work for every four pounds of boat. For the boats we have looked at building, it will take 6-8 years, of 40 hour work weeks with 50 weeks in a year. That is one person working full time on the boat. How many people can work full time on the boat and hold down a job?

If one works 20 hours a week on the boat, while having a full time job, the time to build is 12-16 years. Not many people are going to be able to sustain that work effort with while working a full or part time job. Even if one had the money to NOT work to support oneself and the boat build, 6-8 years is a ALONG time.

I read one blog where the guy did finish his boat. Mostly. It was finished so that the boat could go sailing but the build was not 100% complete. He worked on the boat for 30 years. Yes, 30 years. Three decades and there was still work to do.

Building the hull is the easy part. It is roughly 10-20% of the cost in time and money to build the boat. This is why so many unfinished home built boats are just the hull. The home builder gets a small part of the boat done, at a great time cost, and stops for a variety of reasons.

Lets look at this a different way. If it takes eight years for one person working full time to build the boat, then lets get more people working on the boat!

That is what one successful home builder did. He hired out the welding of the hull to speed things up but he, his wife, and just a little help from friends built the boat. I do mean a little help. Not a lot time wise. By the rule of thumb, it would take eight years to build his boat and it took them eight years BUT with more than one person helping the build. However, the time frame does NOT include the time they spent getting to the point of actually building the boat.

They have a great boat.

Building a boat takes a great deal of money, time and a variety of skills that most people did not possess. That means one has to spend more time and money learning these skills, hiring out the job to people with the skills(more money but faster), or hacking the work. There is no escaping this reality.

Later,
Dan

Right, no stats at all, we can only guess.

 

[dannc]

I have only watched a couple videos, apparently not the one where he earns the title "Asshat" and I applaud his vision, dedication and the commitment to do this while he has a full time job.
Hope he succeeds.

I stopped watching his channel years before the following happened. I THINK this is where he earned his title and lost some support. Doug made a video that said he was injured in an explosion while building the boat. It was a joke/prank that did not go down well with his viewers. He lost subscribers for what he did. The video has been removed.

https://ktul.com/news/local/tulsa-boatbuilder-with-large-online-following-apologizes-for-extreme-prank-video

Later,
Dan

 

[JWellington]

If you haven't watched the videos then how do you defend him then? I've watched them and wouldn't trust him to build a toy boat for me. Is his welding ok? I don't know, but I do know he takes no safety precautions and uses methods that aren't appropriate and so I would worry about shortcuts in other ways. He then took the boat to the yard without it being nearly finished and without insurance. Other shortcuts. I've done my homework before forming an opinion.

My opinion, giving him the benefit of the doubt, is based on the fact that some people have built homemade boats in the past. And because somebody said he had wicked fabrication skills.

 

[dannc]

Right, no stats at all, we can only guess.

No, it is not a guess. It is based on what I have read, experienced and researched.

The people who have this information are the designers who sell building plans. They most certainly are NOT going to say how many people have spent a lot of money on said plans and finished building a boat.

Later,
Dan

 

[BandB]

My opinion, giving him the benefit of the doubt, is based on the fact that some people have built homemade boats in the past. And because somebody said he had wicked fabrication skills.

Somebody said? Who somebody?

Well, I say I wouldn't trust anything he did. What does wicked fabrication skills mean anyway? Unconventional? Not according to appropriate standards? Has anyone who knows anything about boat building praised his skills?

 

[Benthic2]

My opinion, giving him the benefit of the doubt, is based on the fact that some people have built homemade boats in the past. And because somebody said he had wicked fabrication skills.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt is nice, but you've got to realize what is involved in going from an idea to a completed boat. Just think of the skill sets required:

Naval Architect
Draftsman
Welder
Carpenter (both rough and finish)
Electrician
Plumber
Interior Design
Fire Safety
Safety Regulations & Requirements

Sure, this guy may have all those skills, but he's not going to excel in more than a few of them. I wouldn't want a boat that was wired by an electrician who was just "competent". ( especially in a steel hull ) I would want to know that someone has thought about how big or how many scuppers I need to drain my cockpit or foredeck in time. I am sure there are a hundred such decisions that need to be made and very few people are capable of making them all correctly.

Look at the Titanic. They came up with a great idea to have water tight compartments....but they didn't think to seal the top of them. Ooops. The hole from the iceberg contact was relatively small, but all the rivets popped because they had too much slag in them and were too brittle. Double ooops.

My point is that its a complicated process and there is a reason you don't see a lot of homemade boats of that size. I don't hope he fails but I wouldn't bet any money that he gets that thing registered anytime soon. If he does, I certainly wouldn't ever go out on it.

 

[JWellington]

Benthic2. Benefit of the doubt means .......maybe he can do it. You seem to be sure he cant. I'll just wait and see.

 

[Benthic2]

Benthic2. Benefit of the doubt means .......maybe he can do it. You seem to be sure he cant. I'll just wait and see.

Did you see the latest episode ? He's testing the hydraulic system and it keeps tripping the circuit breaker, so these are the steps in his problem solving process:

1. Switch the polarity of the wiring to the motor.
2. Get a bigger breaker
3. Get an even bigger breaker
4. See if it runs on 12 volts instead of 24 volts.
5. Change the motors from being wired in parallel to being wired in series.

Now it seems to be working OK. So....is he a creative and dilligent problem solver, because he did get it working, ....or is he someone that just isn't so good at designing a hydraulic system, or was the design ok but the installer ( also him) was at fault. ???

This guy knows just enough to get him into trouble.

 

[Art]

I've watched many of the videos. Surely want to say he [and certainly she] are the most patient problem solvers imaginable. Will this boat come out 100% correct - heck no. Will it be 80 or 90 or 70 percent correct - your guess is as good as mine. Has he and she done their best to get "IT" right - damn well they are sure trying.

I give them both kudos for this amazing project and how they are going about it.

Here's to wishing them success! And, here's to hoping any portions of failure they experience are at least relatively minor in their extent.

Would I have attempted to accomplish a project as grand in scope and varied in problematic chance ratios - Hell No! But, they are truly adventurous souls with minds working well in combination... I wish them nothing but the best and condemn them for nothing - unlike some on this thread that do more than enough condemnations in their posts.

Interestingly, I've been noticing that the condemners appear to be those that may have considerable more capital then the cheerleaders seem to maybe have... just a personal observation.

 

[cardude01]

Did you see the latest episode ? He's testing the hydraulic system and it keeps tripping the circuit breaker, so these are the steps in his problem solving process:



1. Switch the polarity of the wiring to the motor.

2. Get a bigger breaker

3. Get an even bigger breaker

4. See if it runs on 12 volts instead of 24 volts.

5. Change the motors from being wired in parallel to being wired in series.



Now it seems to be working OK. So....is he a creative and dilligent problem solver, because he did get it working, ....or is he someone that just isn't so good at designing a hydraulic system, or was the design ok but the installer ( also him) was at fault. ???



This guy knows just enough to get him into trouble.

I watched that and was wondering about the design of all the other systems on the boat. [emoji15]

Why is he trying to launch the boat before everything is tested and working ?

 

[ktdtx]

I think most boats are launched without all the systems being in place, tested and working.

Here is an example
http://https://mobius.world/

 

[Art]

I think most boats are launched without all the systems being in place, tested and working.

Here is an example
http://https://mobius.world/

Hi Ken - Link does not open for me??

 

[ktdtx]

Interesting-the link works in the email sent to me by Trawler forum but the same link doesn't work from within the forum.


If you Google Mobius World it is a great blog about building his boat.

 

[JWellington]

Interesting-the link works in the email sent to me by Trawler forum but the same link doesn't work from within the forum.


If you Google Mobius World it is a great blog about building his boat.

I'm able to get the Mobius boat blog. Ill bet it will be a great boat...if it ever gets done, after more than 5 years. Ive mentioned to them that a lot of boaters wouldnt be willing to devote so many years, when you can just buy one off the lot and sail away. He also seems to be donning as much work himself , as the boat yard is. By comparison, Arksen claims they can build a comparable boat in 18 ,months.

 

[cardude01]

I think most boats are launched without all the systems being in place, tested and working.

Here is an example
http://https://mobius.world/

Huge difference between the Mobius build and Seeker.

 

[ktdtx]

Huge difference between the Mobius build and Seeker.

Yes, there does seem to be but just one example of a boat being put in the water without all the systems being sorted out and a person doing a lot of the work himself.

 

[dannc]

I'm able to get the Mobius boat blog. Ill bet it will be a great boat...if it ever gets done, after more than 5 years. Ive mentioned to them that a lot of boaters wouldnt be willing to devote so many years, when you can just buy one off the lot and sail away. He also seems to be donning as much work himself , as the boat yard is. By comparison, Arksen claims they can build a comparable boat in 18 ,months.

Mobious is in the water and is complete. They are doing the shake down of the boat now. Nothing new about this process. Mobius is the first boat built in that class and the owners have been deeply involved in the design and build than most people. That is going to take up time.

I would take any boat builder saying they will take 18 months to build with a block of salt.

Which 50-80 foot power yacht can you go buy right off the lot and go sailing?

Later,
Dan

 

[dannc]

Yes, there does seem to be but just one example of a boat being put in the water without all the systems being sorted out and a person doing a lot of the work himself.

You can't test a boat completely without it being in the water. Testing the boat after the build is complete is part of the process. The owners are going to find things that are not correct and the builder will have to correct them. Just like when one builds a house, there will be problems, which the builder has to fix.

Later,
Dan

 

[JWellington]

Mobious is in the water and is complete. They are doing the shake down of the boat now. Nothing new about this process. Mobius is the first boat built in that class and the owners have been deeply involved in the design and build than most people. That is going to take up time.

I would take any boat builder saying they will take 18 months to build with a block of salt.

Which 50-80 foot power yacht can you go buy right off the lot and go sailing?

Later,
Dan

"Shakedown" means not done...according to their latest blog..after 5 years. And I did give an example, Arksen. Also Circa in NZ that built the Dashew boats. You can also buy good used used similar boats..Many wont wait 5 years, and have to do so much work yourself.

 

[HTurner]

Seeker floats... finally in the water.

 

[cardude01]

Cool, finally!

Is she sitting right in the water ?