“Bat Boat” Construction

by Bill Finch, Jr. and Barry Hamilton

Thruout my 44 years, I have made several half hearted attempts to build boats with very little success, until Barry and I ran across the free plans for the D4 pram from bateau.com. After reading about the stich and glue method of boat building, we realized that this was the “way its supposed to be.”

Click on any of the pictures for enlargements.

This is how we started. We downloaded the plans from the net, then got a bright idea. Barry's cousin had some long sheets of pasteboard, so we transferred the plans to the pasteboard before wasting any wood. After drawing out the front and rear transoms, middle frame, sides and bottom pieces, we put the pasteboard boat together with duct tape to see if everyting would fit. As it turned out, the bottom pieces were an inch or so shy of the rear transom and the rear side. All the other pieces fit together perfectly. We made the proper adjustments to the bottom pieces, and traced our pasteboard templates onto 1/4” luon for the sides and bottom and onto 3/8” plywood for the frames. We decided early that we were going to make some modifications to the design, and we used 1/2” plywood for the front and rear transoms. Yes, its heavier, but we knew we would motorize this dude, and we didn't want to bust it up on the first trip out.

Note that we were not as precise with the cutting as we would have liked to have been, but we soon discovered how to fix that, too. Once we got all the parts fitted, we used dry wall screws on the bulkheads and ty-wraps to hold the sides and bottom together.

Barry did a great job at scribing out the seats, and we modified their height, after seeing how LOW the plans called for them to be. We were more interested in comfort for “old fat guys” to fish all day than remaining traditional.

We raised the level of the rear seat, and then we added our middle seat with the hinged lid. This is our drybox where we can store life jackets, paddles, and where the battery goes for our trolling motor. We drilled a hole in the top of the rear seat to run 10 guage wires for the trolling motor, and attached the wire to a piece of PVC pipe with the middle cut out and 2 bolts run thru for clamping on the trolling motor cables. The PVC pipe was then attached to the rear seat under the port breasthook.

We wanted a higher seat to keep our knees from ending up in our face while fishing. That can be pretty uncomfortable to us older guys. We were also unsure as to the stability of this small boat. All the 8 foot boats we have been in were tippy, so the middle seat keeps the center of gravity where it needs to be.

Save the endangered EPOXY! Use F-26.

Now, here is what we found to be the “secret” of building a stitch and glue boat – F-26 construction adhesive – similar to Liquid Nails, F-26 is pliable after it dries, AND its waterproof! Hey, forget the epoxy fillet stuff with the wood flour – F-26 is premixed, premeasured, and comes in its own dispenser. If you can use a caulking gun, you can apply F-26. And talk about saving that precious expensive epoxy! Just as you would apply the epoxy fillet, lay out a bead of F-26 & make the concave curve at each seam with a plastic spoon. At roughly $2.00 per tube, you just can't go wrong. We only used about 10 tubes for the whole project which included gluing on the keel guard and noodles. The epoxy sticks to the F-26, and F-26 also adheres to epoxy. We actually saved enough epoxy from the “small boat kit” from Bateu (1 & ½ gallons mixed System Three epoxy) to fiberglass the bottom of our little craft.

Notice too, the seams that would be visible inside the boat were formed using inside corner molding that we shaped to make a nice concave strip. The corner molding was a little thick at the edges, so we removed about one saw kerf on each side, and used a belt sander on the back side of the molding to round it over so it would fit better in the non perpendicular joints. We then ran a bead of F-26 in the joint as well as on the molding itself, and applied the molding to the joint. Where the bottom joins the sides, we layed the boat over on its side, and used bricks to hold the molding in place until it stuck. We used a piece of screen door molding for the keel that covered many sins.

For the seams that didn't show and for the breasthooks, we simply ran an appropriate bead of F-26, and smoothed in the curve with a plastic spoon. This gave us our smooth curve in the seams we needed for later applying the fiberglass tape and epoxy. Where there were rough edges or misapplied F-26, we sanded them using an electric grinder.

Here, you can see where we have removed all the dry wall screws and ty-wraps, and used F-26 as a filler for the holes as well as to smooth out the outside seams.

Our keel did not fit well at all, but the F-26 filled the gaps, and we sanded them smooth. F-26 sands out well if you don't get it too hot. It has a tendency to melt if it gets too warm.

Here is a good shot of what we had on the inside after applying the corner molding and sanding. The electric grinder is a must have for smoothing seams inside and out.Also notice that we applied the F-26 to the keel piece on each side so that it rounded out the seam. We were then ready to do a final fit of the seat tops.

The seat tops are cut and fitted, and ready for F-26ing into place.

The epoxy mixed fine, and went on nicely. Barry had never done any of that before, but once he got into it, he sailed right along. Again, I had made earlier attempts at boat building using polyester, so I had a slight advantage when the epoxy step began.

Here, you can see where we completed the epoxy and taping on the front inside of the boat. The aft port compartment was yet to be done at this point. We tried various ways of removing the air bubbles from the fiberglass tape as we worked, but the easiest way seemed to be to use the 3 inch brush we used to apply the mixed epoxy. We also deviated from the plans in our floatation. We didn't want to spend a lot of money on the two part foam, so we used what we had – styrofoam packing peanuts. Most people hate the little buggers, but we had plenty scrounged and laying around to fill the front seat compartment as well as the port and starboard rear seat compartments. I am sure we don't have all the boyancy that the expensive foam provides, but we have plenty to keep the boat afloat - even full of water, and it was FREE!

As I said before, because we used the F-26 for our fillets, we had plenty of epoxy left to fiberglass the bottom of our boat. We wanted the extra protection since we planned to haul it in the back of our pickup trucks (Everybody in Mississippi has a pickup truck.), and wanted to save the bottom from all that scraping. Notice we also left off the rear skeg as we would only break it off running it in and out of our trucks, After fiberglassing the bottom, we began to apply an oil based primer coat to hide flaws and in preparation for painting.

It took several coats of primer to hide SOME of our flaws.

We actually found that there just wasn't enough primer available to really fix some of our little problems, so we just call them character.

All in all, however, it was amazing how sturdy & nice looking the boat became after a little work with the epoxy, the primer, and a little sanding.

After putting on a couple of coats of battleship grey paint, we realized just how nice our boat was looking and how much we wanted to keep it that way, so we decided to add a keel guard. We knew we would be running the boat up on the bank of our local lakes, and also up onto concrete boat ramps that would really ruin our neat paint job – the keel taking the brunt of the damage, so we began to look for some inexpensive protection. I looked on the net for keel guard like I had seen on new fiberglass bass boats, and found that it ran about $185.00 for an 8 foot section. “I don't think so!” As I was in a nearby Home Depot, I asked if they had any hard rubber stripping, was sent to the home decorating department, and shown a 20 foot roll of black rubber baseboard, retailing for about $15. That was the ticket. We unrolled the rubber baseboard in my neighbor's shop, and cut off the rolled edge using his table saw, leaving a 20 foot strip of black rubber with one finished edge. What you see here, is a really nice keel guard made from F-26ing 2 strips of the rubber baseboard down each side of the keel, finished edges in. It works great, and we even protected some of the other areas with the leftover pieces. Our handles were attached using both F-26 and the wood screws provided. We predrilled the holes, F-26ed the holes and the handle backs, and screwed them on.

As our color scheme progressed from grey to grey and black to grey, black, and yellow, we knew it had to be the “Bat Boat”.

I got on the net & downloaded a neat looking Batman logo, printed it on adhesive paper, and sealed it to the boat using a quick drying clear laquer made by Rustoleum.

Mr. Barry found a neat pencil attachment for a tape measure to lay out the black stripe. We tried to lay it out with masking tape, but there was always a kink in the line. The pencil attachment let him hold the tape measure to the gunwhale of the boat and scribe a nice line down the side exactly following the curve of the gunwhale.

As I said before, the color scheme included yellow. Those are yellow swimming noodles straight from Wal Mart that we put on the gunwhales. We wanted to make absolutely sure our fat butts wouldn't sink this baby, so we ripped the noodles halfway in and halfway through, and F-26ed them to the sides. With them plus the styrofoam peanuts under the front seat and the port and starboard sections of the back seat, it takes three 200 plus pound men to completely sink her AFTER she is filled with water!

Well, there she is, the “Bat Boat”.

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