Nomad Vlog - Oct 2026 - Boat building club, learning through model making, Sharing Skills, and more

so today we're just going to do a little vlog. i had some notes. so i started a boat building club when i was in vancouver. there's a small club that we have there called Orlock and Sail. a great little organization. it's been going oh man probably like almost 30 years now or something like that. and they've got a little workshop down on the water at the maritime museum. like a small i don't know how big it is like 10 by 12 foot shed kind of thing maybe it's a bit bigger than that 10 by 15 but sure so the club builds boats together collectively and they've got a small fleet that they use and they probably get like i don't know 20 or 30 people out on a saturday coming down there to uh take part in either building or just maintaining the boats and using the boat so great organization it was started by Dave Bradford of Alder Bay Boats Dave has retired in the last few years. The club started out in his shop and it has expanded. I was on the board for a little while while I was in Vancouver. I ran into somebody who reached out to me who's a member there. He lives in Victoria now and he's been traveling back and forth from Victoria to Vancouver to participate in the builds over there. So I said to him, you know, that's stupid. We should have a small building club here in Victoria. And there was one a long, long time ago, but it was short-lived, I think. So he and I said, you know, let's just, let's start something up. So let's try it. So that's what we've done. We've just had one meeting. We've got a second meeting tonight. and at the moment we're just we have i don't know somewhere between six and ten members for the moment keep it relatively small because we don't have a a fixed place to hold it what we've decided to do is take turns using our own shop spaces as to host the event so we did the first one here at my space Going to another guy's tonight. I arranged to collaborate with the Cowichan Bay Maritime Center to host our group builds. So that's a bit of a drive for us, unfortunately. It's like about an hour to drive out there. um from Victoria so that's a little bit of an impediment but at least it's a start you know and they've got the workshop space they've got insurance to cover uh people working in that workshop so they're they're down with that idea which is cool and of course if there's some locals there that want to jump on or whether it's other members of the Cowichan Bay Maritime Center Society that that want to participate with us that's cool too so I'll make sure that we extend that that invitation. So anyhow we've decided to get rolling on our first build pretty quickly and i think we've decided on doing my forest and stream skiff now that's it's not my own design it's um it's a design that hold on a sec so i found this guy online somewhere. i think greg russell has got it in his book too. it was designed in 1890 and was published in forest and stream magazine. and it's just like a nine foot uh no it's a little bit longer it's like nine foot nine or something like that. if you're interested in this in this by the way this is a design that i have produced sort of a set of plans for to build I built like a scale model version of, so it's the same boat, but I've designed it. With little plank expansions and things like that, you can knock out a little wooden scale model right off the plan. So it'll come out like this size if you're just working with printouts that are like standard US letter size sheets. And you could build it in wood, you can build it in cardboard. Here's sort of a just a little simple cereal box cardboard version of it. And the idea is that this is supposed to be give you sort of a taste of a boat building to get you started. The plans are all annotated to educate you about the basics of wooden boat building and it also has the original article that came with that that set of plans from 1890. Anyway, I thought it would be a kind of a fun place for us to start so we'll probably build that and i'm going to bring out materials for us to loft it full size while we're out there at the meeting. now you can get that set of plans if you join my patreon group at any level you can download digital version. if you join me at like the five dollar and up level i mail you out a set of paper plans along with a sticker. if you don't feel like joining me on patreon that's fine you can buy them off my website for five bucks as well. Regardless, you could take the model version, you could expand that to make it a full-size version if you want to, like you could use the plank expansions and scale those up if you wanted to, or you can just build it traditional where you don't use the plank expansions exactly, you just build it with solid wood planks. So it's basically convertible from solid wood to plywood if you want. Since we're on the subject of Couch and Bay, my lapstrake course there is full, so that's happening in January. We'll run, there'll be another one next year, and if you're interested in participating that at any time, you should just contact the Maritime Centre there, the Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre, or Cowichan Bay Maritime Society, and get onto their mailing list. Let them know that you're interested in the course, and they should put you onto a call list for the next time we're running one, which will, in theory, be somewhere around fall, winter next year. So I've been kind of back into the interest of model building a little bit. I was watching the YouTubes and there was this video that came up about these guys in Bangladesh that live in this area that is all farmland but when monsoon season comes through it just the whole thing floods. Everywhere floods and there's just these little islands that are left where people's homes are and you can't get anywhere without a boat and so there are these guys that build these boats and so I was really The way they're building them, they're very simple double-ended flat bottom boats, but they have this cool process that I hadn't seen before in which they're laying out what is essentially like a ladder. and uh two ladders that they connected the ends with you know raked stems and so as i were watching the videos like i i want to try building one of those so i was following their process and took a bunch of screenshots to try and work out some rough dimensions and uh and then decided to build a model using their process and so what i found kind of cool about it was they're very efficient with the materials they're using the way they plank the bottom of this thing so clunk clunk clunk clunk like they just like maximize whatever plank they slam down first they don't worry about trying to make everything symmetrical you can see they run a plank off one angle and just plank across and do the same thing the other way and i thought it's kind of kind of a neat use efficient use of materials that way they do the same thing with decks kind of like that and then what was really interesting i found was that they didn't plank the sides they They used like a roll of tin or probably like aluminum. to uh to plank the sides and so they just nailed this thing on and i'm pretty sure they didn't put anything underneath the the edges of the tin so i think they uh they did mention in the video that they leave the tarring up to the customer so i think customers just come along and they just gobble that thing up with you know some sort of roofing tar or something like that But regardless, it was just kind of interesting, the methodology they used, and so I found it quite intriguing. I'll put a link to that video down in the description for you to go check out. And I've also been watching this other guy who I think is from... Indonesia and he does a different style of boat that is well it's not dissimilar than this in some ways but it's got a very different methodology. The garboard's first method much like we would do with a flat bottom skiff and he's connecting those garboard planks up and then fitting some floors in between and then he's using the technique for extending the sides by edge nailing. the board so he'll drill a pile of holes put nails in there and make a mating plank that goes on on edge on top of that with mating holes and they drive them all together and he uses this kind of big hooked scarf joint to join the planks uh longitudinally So I find that kind of interesting. Just the way they're able to sort of do this stuff freehand I find quite cool. And then what's interesting to me about the Indonesian guy is he takes that same methodology and he produces quite a wide variety of boats using the same basis but then building on top of that like he'll use this canoe form as as a as a bottom but then he'll like extend out to make this platform for a wider boat that's got more capacity or something that'll you know have a long tail on it or he'll you know make a transom version to make it more like a a planing hull. Anyhow that gets me on to my next subject. I got invited to be a judge at the Victoria Classic Boat Show. It's been running for I don't know 30 years or more something like that and I don't really go down to it too much you know once in every few years I pop down for an hour or something like that but I know a lot of the people that are involved in the show and so this year they had a couple judges that retired out I guess and so they asked me to come join. And as well as Sam Devlin. If you're a fan of stitch and glue boats, you would know who Sam Devlin is. And so it was really cool to get to meet him, spend a little bit of time with him. So I had a great time with Sam, and I picked up Sam's book on boat building. I had it on my shelf already, so I was skimming through it, and then I found he had a really interesting Thank chapter in there about model making and about using Model making as a form of developing lines, like building planked models, as opposed to... carved half models and he so he lays out his method for doing that which i found quite you. intriguing and so of course is mainly focused on building chine hulls every now and then my wife and i go out for some boating we jump in a canoe and we go to a local waterway it's like an estuary and along the way there's a little coffee shop that's right down by the water and so we can actually paddle up to it they don't have like a dock or anything like that we kind of cut clamber out at the edge of the water. Hopefully the tide is favorable to us. We don't have to get muddy, but it's just something we like to do is to sort of paddle up this estuary, this inlet, and then, you know, stop for coffee on our way back down and have a snack. But I've always thought it'd be kind of cool to build a boat that is specifically for doing this one little day trip. The canoe is fine for it, but it's not necessarily the perfect thing. And so I came up with this idea for this simple chine hull, kind of a scow or an elongated pram that would actually roll well. But I'd also like it to be like a wheelbarrow boat so I can, you know, pull up to a parking spot, offload this thing, and then wheel it down to the water because there's some different places along this waterway that you can launch easily enough. And so I want this thing to be sort of canoe. Sam's book gave me some ideas about how to develop that design. I kind of did a rough sketch without taking any actual measurements into consideration. So I thought I'd like to sort of expand on that, redraw that thing, and use Sam's method to try and build a model of it. Another thing I wanted to talk about was products for sale. I haven't really done much for that. I've had t-shirts and stuff available and they really aren't. don't move too much. but the one thing i do get inquiries about are aprons. like i've got an apron on my the youtube store but it's it's you know it's okay it's nothing special it's pretty much just like a cooking type apron uh not really a great shop apron i would say. But I thought I would throw it out there anyhow. But I've had enough people ask me about the apron that I wear like, where did you get that? Well I made it. So I was wondering if there's interest in my producing say a small run of aprons just to try this out. I'd probably just do a short run myself of say half a dozen or ten aprons or something like that and if it's a hit talk to there's a local outfit in Vancouver that produces aprons. commercially like a small mom-and-pop kind of shop that I would probably go talk to. Anyhow, if a Nomad apron is something that might be of interest to you, let me know in the comments and especially let me know what your price point would be on that. I know like Adam Savage has an apron that he sells. I don't know what the price tag is on his. So I'd like to get a feel for if that's of interest, you know, what's going to be the breaking point or what's the reasonable range that you'd be willing to spend on an apron that's sort of largely duplicating my sort of... style of apron and the detailing that I have in it, the functionality that I have in it. And another sort of interesting product I thought about was making like a model maker's size bevel square. Like I've got this guy that I use here. And I was thinking about making one that's just like teeny tiny for for model making because when you're when you're doing stuff like this and you want to pull an angle off of something and transcribe it you know a square like that gets to be a bit chunky but a little tiny little one that's maybe we'll say it's I'm gonna guess it's maybe three quarters of an inch or an inch long something You know, big enough that you can actually handle it, but small enough that it fits into the scale of the model. I'd probably do that all in brass. If that's of interest to you, please let me know. And again, what kind of price point would you find reasonable for it? Let's see, okay, I got a call from a guy who's set up a website that I find interesting. This is not sponsored, I'm just doing this out of community interest, shall we say. This website is called boatbuildinglog.com. It's a site that is intended to act as like a... A tracking tool for your own projects and as a resource for people who are interested in boat building projects, DIY boat building projects. And so the users are invited to create a specific log for a specific project and then you log the time you're putting in the materials you're putting in And it works like a journal. So that others can refer to it and see how long it took you to build your thing. You can upload photos, you can leave notes, all that sort of stuff. I thought that's kind of cool because it's like, you know, there's a lot of people put a lot of blogs out there of their personal builds. And this sort of brings it all into one resource to allow you, the interested party, to get on there and see if you can find something that's helpful to you in terms of like the cost and time. And that sort of thing and the challenges there within. So I think we're going to employ this tool for the boatbuilding club, or at least I'm going to propose that. So that we've got a single point for the club members to go and see how the project has come along. Those who can't participate or haven't had a chance to come down and work on a project. So we don't have to worry about setting up our own website or anything like that right away. The one thing about the boat club is that I don't have the time or energy to do all this administrative stuff with it. So I'm just trying to facilitate. The club, hopefully there'll be some members in there that want to take on these roles. So I think the boatbuildinglog.com website would be a great tool for that club. And I've been talking with the creator of that website, and he thinks so too. He thinks it could be a good resource for other clubs. So he's building it out a little bit to suit a club. He's building out a portion of it to suit small community organizations like that so they can use it. for their own purposes and so it'll have some different factors that allow you to sort of plug in how many participants were working on a particular project at any given day and that sort of thing. So it it'll log things a little differently. The last thing I want to talk about is I want to do a Q&A video and so I'm putting out a call for questions for me. So if there's anything you want to know about small boat building, about About how I do things or answers to your questions about challenges you have or anything. Sky's the limit. You can leave a comment and I'll pull those questions out and put them into my pile. Or you could send me an email if you want. Or you could go on to Instagram and send me a DM over there and present your question. So if you throw your name in there and you want your name called out, I'm happy to do that too. Or if you don't want your name called out, by all means, let me know. Okay, so there we are. Q&A call out. Give me your questions. So that's it for today. If you enjoy these videos, you want to help support the channel, please consider joining me over on Patreon. Link's up here or down in the description. And I want to thank you all for watching. Please join me again for the next video, and we will see you later. Ciao for now, folks.