Scott’s Folding Boat

Official Update: Project Mothballed

Took the folding boat back to the dock to see how fast the water is coming in, and it is too fast.

In the matter of a minute I noticed the water. I didn’t fully inflate the air bladders, so that might have contributed to the speed as compared to last time with the family. Or the critical leak might have started nearer the end of the last outing.

Additionally, one of the floorboard hinges pulled its screws out - but I think that was directly related to the fact that the air bladders weren’t full and second rib wasn’t pulled outward under it to fully support the outer panel.

So it is now hung up in storage. Mothballed.

And she floats! It wasn’t bone dry… so that is likely an issue. There was maybe a cup of water in the bottom at the end of the sea trials. More than just from paddle dripping, so that is a little concern. But honestly it performed really well - extremely stable, dryer than expected, and moved easily over the water.

Next steps will be to take it back to the water when I can just sit in it for an hour to see how much water comes in - dry paddles. That will be the next test for it’s fate. It might need a better skin job with a more hearty and weldable fabric. I have no feasible way to seam in a dagger board “sleeve” (“trunk” won’t be the best word for what it will be).

Inflated the side bladders/stretchers for the first time. You can see that I haven’t cleaned up the edges or added seats…. but today is the day!!! She gets wet… hopefully we do not. 🤪💦💧🛶

Sorry the picture is so dark, but I folded the folding boat for the first time tonight. And it worked. And with a small audience.

Some trimming and cleaning up edges needed yet - assuming it holds water.

Better pics and a video soon.

Started skinning the beast tonight. She isn’t nearly as pretty as I had hoped, but trade offs were made. Put in a giant inflatable pool noodle in the top panel. Once that is inflated it should pull tension into the skin. The middle frames are not notched into the permanent cross frames, so they should slide out and up to take the slack and tension.

The ends are not super tidy or taunt. I experimented on some scraps with seaming and gluing and hot welding. And opted for folding and tucking. Not ideal but better integrity to stay dry. Which is a little in doubt already.

So stay tuned for water trials sometime soon. That will decided what and if there are next steps.

I scabbed together a few frames to hold the boat for skinning a couple weeks ago. Then took it apart and started urethaning last night. My wife took an action shot - in case you wanted to see a paint brush in action. I put three coats on the lateral frames last week and made sure to deeply soak the plywood edges.

Side note, I have 5 bicycles in the living room for the weekend so these can live in the garage.

I was working on the removable cockpit floor tonight. It is 1/2” plywood and will be two pieces that notch into the frames and sit on the ribs and support blocking. Not shown yet in these pictures, but the two “wings” on each floor section are hinged so one side fold on top and the other flat on the bottom. I haven’t made the smaller twist-locks for the side wings, but you can imagine the same thing that is in the center bottom being up at the top-center of the wings.

With the floor locked in, it is SUPER rigid - a lot more than I had imagined!!

The picture series shows it coming apart… first the floor sections are removed (they hold the frames from pivoting and locked on their dowels), then the frames pivot toward the center and all the way upright to unlock off of the huge panhead bolts in the gunwales, then the gunwale and ribs can collapse flat.

After I wrap up the last bits of the cockpit floor, I am going to do a quick sand on the plywood edges and prep everything so far for spar varnish. Separating the ribs, etc. After everything gets a solid shellacking, it will be time to stretch and install the skin!!! I want to get it floating and tested before I do any other outfitting.

And for those of you who were missing boat pictures… I just moved it into the living room for assembly… 😜 The wife is out of town… 😘

The upper ribs are missing still - need to sand those. Then it will be time for blocking and the floor assembly.

I’ve busied myself over the last couple weeks on reworking the sail. So the improvements:

1: Nixed the gooseneck and went to boom jaws with a vang/downhaul setup.

2: Nixed the batwing and recut the sail to a gunter - it was always my backup plan. It drops the sail area from 48 to 35 sf, but it will probably perform similarly except for on a run.

3: Loose-footed.

4: Added another shallower reef point and added jiffy-reef lines. With the smaller sail, I think reefing is less critical. But as I mentioned before, this will likely go onto a 8’ dinghy also. The pics are full, 1st, and 2nd.

5: Cut a squared section on the mast foot, and made a matching mast step.

6: Added SS wire stays. They are long yet for my “yard cross”, but setup for quick connect to this thing.

I left a healthy roach on the leach, so it might need regular light battens added, but that can wait. All the lines are just temp tied until it gets varnished - so messy yet, forgive that. There was finally some wind after work and no other plans to get it setup.

Sail test day: successful

I made a make-shift frame (neighbors probably thought I went deep into Christianity carrying an 8’ cross out back). It all went up as expected and stayed up…. It wasn’t terribly breezy but expectedly inconsistent in the alley.

There was a healthy amount of sail twist (boo, but entirely expected). And the batten/gaff jaw connection was too tensioned - it has a tendency to push the jaws hard all the way to one side - which then shortened the outhaul on those two points. Not shown in the pictures, I moved the rear main sheet anchor port by 2’ to simulate a traveler line and that helped some to pull downward more on the boom.

It reefed beautifully - 48sf down to 28sf. I need to add a hole in the boom at the end for the reef clew tie-off, but I knew that was missing. Reefing takes out the bottom panel and the halyard is secured higher on the yard by a tied on soft shackle (you can see it a little of you zoom in on the upper yard in the second pic). With the lower batten tamed by the boom, the jaws rotated freely with the boom and sail.

Mast, spars, and sail are all ready to stand up and test out tomorrow. It collapses into a nice 8’ “package” with most everything connected and ready to roll.

I am not totally happy with the gooseneck. It is brilliantly simple and works as expected, it just requires the boom to be at a downward 45° angle compared to the boom to attach/detach. So that means this has to happen before the mast is stayed in place. Positive… can’t come off while underway. Negative… it would be a feat of agility to manage for rowing or stowing underway. I might turn the hook over and put some sort spring slide. If it has to be upward at 45° (+20° from normal operation), I think I will still want a safety latch of some sort.

Another possible alteration is to thin down the “battens”. My inspiration had the jaws on the first batten/spar and then jointed up to the middle then top spar - plus a very flat canvas. I instead set it up more like a Gunter rig and added a bit of luff and foot curve. So I think these need to be more “full battens” than pseudo-sprits. But I want to get it in the wind first. Worst case is I remove them altogether and recut the roach significantly.

I have yet to mount the stays - going to wait for the boat for those, obviously.

The making of a mast. I decided to make a fully round mast. So trimmed it square and 45° it into an octagon, then 16 sides. I saw other folks invert a sanding belt so I wrapped a hole saw in tape and went to work. Not perfect, but pretty damn good for the little effort it took.