Several years ago I promised my wife that I'd build her a big mahogany boat for the top of the piano. She's a patient lady! What got me off my duff was that she said I could buy a turbine... as soon as I got rid of a 4' cube of airplane kits and built her the boat I promised. Within 5 minutes both boys were assigned kits :) Last night I started on her boat.

The plans are Garry Finlay's, which you may find on the Astec Marine site. Garry sized them to fit nicely on E-sized paper. You can download the PDFs (2 pages) and have them printed for just a few dollars at Staples or Kinkos. Note that Garry is in the process of updating the plans as I find minor issues. They are fine for building - we're just working to make things perfect.


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I began with a trued plywood base that is oversize for the boat. I added a straight centerline, then marked off the locations of each bulkhead.


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Then I used a triangle to make a pair of lines 3/16" apart (the thickness of the wood) across the width of the plank and labeled each pair of lines with the corresponding bulkhead letter.

So much for Monday night.