William R. Watt wrote:
Brian Nystrom ) writes:

William R. Watt wrote:


companies like Chesapeke(?) Light Craft and Pygmy Boats sell plywood boats
and kits make from computer cut panels. people buy the boats or they
can assemble the kits themselves and save a lot of money.

Compared to what? When you factor in all the tools and other supplies,
plus the time involved, there is no savings at all. Building boats is a
labor of love, not an economic expedient.


I've already mentioned the 1/3 cost savig nin building "stripper" boats from
a kit. That includes all the materials and assumes you have a few basic
tools on hand. Buildign boats is not a labour of love, it is mostly a way
of being able to afford the cost of the boat. I don't know where you get
this "labour of love" business. The same place you got the 2% hull
scratches friction, somewhere in the deep dark obscure recesses of your
imagination?

It's real simple Bill, so perhaps even you can understand it. The price
of a stripper kayak kit that includes seat parts, footpegs, deck rigging
and finishing supplies is $1200-$1400 (based on the prices from Newfound
Woodworks) plus shipping, which isn't cheap since they must be shipped
by truck. Unless one is already a woodworker, you can figure on adding
several hundred dollars for the cost of tools and the materials to build
a strongback, sawhorses, etc., to the cost of the kit an supplies. That
brings your your total hardware and supplies cost up to $1500~$2000.
When you factor in the 200-300 hours of labor involved in building a
stripper (typical numbers derived from what hobbyist builders report on
kayak building sites), even if you only value your time at $10/hour
(slave wages), you're looking at a real cost of $3500-$5000 for your
first boat. Subsequent boats will be somewhat cheaper since you now have
the tools and strongback, but that's assuming that you build more than one.

Considering that you can buy a new 'glass boat for ~$2500 or a used one
for as little ~$1000 (I've bought several at that price), where is your
savings, Bill? You accuse me of imaginative, yet it's quite obvious that
your "1/3 savings" figure is wishful thinking at best. I enjoy building
boats, but I'm under no illusion that it saves me any money. The main
reason for building a boat (other than the recreational aspects of
woodworking) is that I get exactly what I want.

More importantly, what percentage of kayakers build their own boats? For
that matter, what percentage is even capable of it or has a place to do
it? You seem to forget that we live in a country where most people can't
even change the oil in their cars, let alone build kayaks.

enough people build their own canoeos and kayaks to make the selling of
plans and kits profitable.

What does that prove? It doesn't cost much to design a boat and sell
plans. Both plans and kits are much more profitable than selling
commercial kayaks.

belive it or not there are even people out there
building birch bark canoes and teaching the building of birch bark canoes,
and canoe camping in the birch bark canoes they built.

Gee, Bill, REALLY???? Wow, that's INCREDIBLE!!!! I've never heard of
anyone actually BUILDING a boat or TEACHING people to build boats!!!!
You must be the smartest, most informed person ON THE ENTIRE PLANET!!!!

building a small boat is not rocket science.

You have a truly amazing grasp of the obvious.

I've lost count of the number
of webistes full of photos of novices building their own canoes and kayaks
every one starting with a comment to the effect, "Before starting to build
my own canoe (or kayak) I'd never so much as changed a light bulb. I was a
complet kutz with two left thumbs." and so on ad infinitum.

Yet boat builders are still a MINUSCULE percentage of the total number
of kayakers. You really need to get a grip on the reality of the market.
To put some perspective on it, I belong to a club with over 400 members
in it. Out of those, I know of 9 (2.25%) who have built boats. That's
among paddlers who are dedicated enough to join a club. We represent
only a small fraction of the total kayaking population, the majority of
whom paddle plastic recreational boats. Based on that, I think it's safe
to say kayak builders represent well under 1% of the kayaking
population. Is that specific enough for you???

I've read
somewhere some Brian Nystrom guy built his own first boat at one time.

You read wrong. I built my third boat. My first two were commercial boats.

While it's certainly possible to custom design and cut panels for stitch
and glue boats, no one does so. The closest thing to it is Newfound
Woodworks will take a customer's design and make the panels for them,
but there are even fewer people who can design a boat than there are
than can build them.

that doesn't mean it can't be done. I wrote that it could be done. I did
nto write taht it was beign done. There are a lot of things in this world
that could be done, or could be done better, that aren't. that was my point.

Whether it CAN be done or not is irrelevant if it's NOT being done. If
you think it's such a good idea and has profit potential, go ahead and
do it. The people who already possess the equipment and the expertise
aren't doing it, so I suspect that they don't believe that it's a
commercially viable proposition.

No kidding, but it's even more complex and time consuming to build one
than it is to do a S&G. BTW, I do build skin-on-frame boats, so I have
an idea what's involved.

I don't see your point. The major savings in building one's own boat is in
labour. You build it yourself to save the cost or paying someone
esle to build ti for you. YOu also save other costs such as "shop" costs
by building it in your garage, attic, or living room.

I've already addressed this fallacy above. Either it's a "labor of love"
and you don't count the labor cost, or you're not saving anything. You
can't have it both ways, Bill.

as for the preformance of flat panel (hard chine) hulls its actually the
turbulence at the chines which creates more drag at higher speeds compared
to smooth chined hulls. the wetted surface vs wave-making again.

While turbulence is certainly a possibility with a poor design, it's not
a given. The wetted surface area is what makes the difference. Why do
you think that EVERY racing boat made has a rounded hull? Read the
manufacturer's literatue and read basic information on boat design and
they all say the same thing: round hulls have less surface area for a
given displacement than hard chine hulls. A spherical hull would have
the absolute least wetted area, but obviously, it would no longer be a
kayak or canoe.

I think you'd better take another look at what I wrote. Hard chined boats
do have a bit more wetted surface but the turbulence at the hard chine has
a bigger effect, moreso as speed increases. (Lapped strake boats have the
same increase in resistance.)

Where does this come from? I don't see any reason why a chine has to
cause turbulence. Lapstrake boats are not comparable with single chine
kayaks, whose chines are typically fully immersed and which have
smoother entries and exits. You're comparing apples and oranges.

Interestingly, and contrary to what yoru
write above, a spherical hull does nto have the minimum wetted surface.
That's because only part of the shpere is immersed, ie. a chord of the
circle. John Winters (www.greenvall.com/winters.html) has some diagrams to
illustrate this. I thought as you did until I saw his examples.

That link doesn't work. The correct link is:

www.greenval.com/jwinters.html

I realize that only a chord of the sphere is in the water. If you look
at the diagram at

http://www.greenval.com/fig1_3.gif

....it shows exactly what I was talking about. For a given beam width,
the spherical hull has the least wetted surface. If you ignore the beam
width and look only at equal displacement, a spherical hull still has
the least wetted surface. Although shape E is not perfectly spherical,
it's pretty obvious that a spherical shape with slightly increased depth
would have as little or perhaps slightly less surface area. This
explains why racing boat hulls are narrow and round. It's too bad he
chose not to include such a sample in the diagram.

some places you read about wetted surface vs wave-making. other places
its wetted surface vs residual resistance, where residual resistance is
any kind of drag that's not surface friction and includes drag due to
wave-making, poor tracking, hard chines, etc.

That's not the point, you can have two boats with the same wavemaking
resistance and one with a rounded hull will have less drag than one with
a hard chine hull, due strictly to the difference in wetted surface area.

nope, the drag of the hard chine hull includes the turbulence about the
chine which is greater than the difference in friction resistance.

Again, where is the reference? I don't believe that a single hard chine
is going to cause turbulence in an of itself in a well designed kayak.

but
don't forget you can have a V-bottom hard chined boat which tracks better
than a round bottom hull with the same length and wetted surface and the
hard chined hull will have less residual resistance because it spends less
time slewing around, and more time going straight. as we have all seen,
the boat with the rounded bottom cross section will often have "deadwood"
added at the bow and stern or a skeg (or rudder) or both to help it track,
and these add wetted surface to the rounded hull.

You're drawing a lot of invalid conclusions here. A long, narrow,
rounded hull with straight keel line (typical racing hull configuration)
tracks VERY strongly. One reason why most of them have rudders is to
enable the paddler to turn the boat, not because it won't track. The
main reason for rudders is to get maximum efficiency from the powerplant
(the paddler). It's more efficient to have a small rudder to control the
direction of the boat than it is to use leans and sweep strokes, which
reduce the biomechanical efficiency of the stoke.

By "deadwood" are you referring to bow and stern overhangs? If so, they
do nothing to aid tracking, as they're not in the water most of the time.

It's very obvious that you've never worked in retail. I have
extensively, including owning a retail business. Your perceptions about
the buying public couldn't be farther off the mark. Most people,
especially first time buyers of a product, are CLUELESS. Most simply
want someone to guide them to a suitable product quickly and not screw
them over. It really IS that simple! If you were to start talking about
horsepower and other technicalities, their eyes would quickly glaze over
and they'll find a reason to leave, after which they'll go buy elsewhere
from someone who doesn't bore or intimidate them. I know this because
I've worked in businesses where technical data was widely available and
we always took the approach of educating people as much as possible and
helping them make the right decision for themselves (consultative
selling). In doing so, you learn that there is a VERY fine line between
enough information and "information overload" and that it's different
for every customer. If someone comes in looking for "a yellow kayak",
they're not going to hang around while you explain advanced
hydrodynamics to them. You set them up the best you can, offer as much
information as they'll tolerate, take their money and let them be on
their way. I didn't like the way I was forced to do business in some
cases, but I figured that they were better off if they came to me and I
at least had the opportunity to offer them useful information, than if
they went and bought at one of the "Marts" from some bored high school
kid who couldn't care less.


I agree when a person walks in off the street do not want to be
"overloaded" with information that has no meaning to them, however they
can understand information realted to their strength, weight, and body
size. They might not know anything about boats but they certainly do know
a lot about themselves. That's my point. The information should be
provided in a way that relates to the buyer, not the boat. It makes nto
sense to graph boat speed vs total resistance when it can just as easily
be plotted against horsepower with reference lines drawn for average (1/20
hp), athletic (1/4 hp), and absolute maximum sprinting (1/5 hp) power
output of humans. People will consult and use meaningful, relevant
information.

I'll guarantee you that if you stick a graph in the faces of customers,
the overwhelming majority of them will have no idea what they're looking
at, nor will they care. On the other hand, if a dealer simply told them
that a particular boat was well suited to someone their size, that same
percentage would accept that. The few that would understand the graph
might ask "why", in which case you can offer a more detailed explanation.

My areas of expertise in my former life was not selling boat but in
numerical computer systems and statistics. One my areas of research and
application was the graphical analysis and display of numerical
information. So I just might possibly also know of that which I write.

That confirms something I had suspected.

While I certainly wouldn't question your data analysis capability, it
has nothing to do with the way people react to information in real
world. What makes perfect sense to you would be nothing more than
"technical gibberish" to most people. I've dealt with people in the real
world (as a retailer and as a technical trainer) and I can tell you
unequivocally that's a FACT.

No, it's because most people have no clue what they need and they're
looking for someone to hold their hand through the buying process. It's
also because most are either too lazy or too disinterested to do any
research for themselves. Many simply aren't capable of understanding
technical data (or at least they're convinced that they're not). You may
not like it, but those are the hard facts of retail. People like you and
I and some others here are but a tiny minority of the buying public.
Only the niche market companies will bother to cater to us, because
that's what separates them from the mainstream.

I have to disagree. Blaming the buyer for the seller's failure to provide
important information in a form the buyer can use is a cop out. Sellers
who blame customers for their own failings are at risk of having someone
take their customers away from them.

Sorry Bill, but whether you like it or not, that's the way it works in
the real world. While I agree that that manufacturers should make
technical information available, doing so would be largely a wasted
effort as the overwhelming majority of customers would neither
understand it or care. Given that, I can't fault them for not wasting
their resources to distribute this information widely. Selling the boat
is the dealer's job; the manufacturer should provide them with the
information to do so, but they're not responsible for getting it to the
customer. If they want to put it on a web site where interested
customers can find it, fine, but including it in marketing literature
would be an unnecessary expense and waste of paper.