AKA: I am a fan of Colvin's work. They are not my kind of boat but I sure think he did a great job with the designs. I don't have to want one to admire them. Colvin had
"the eye".

 

Colvin did a great job of providing plans for home steel boat builders when no one else would. He was ahead of his time, when it came to cruising boat building materials . He is well behind the times in his methods and technology, when it comes to modern steel boat building methods.

 

"an underlying theme of extreme envy"
Brent, there you go again projecting.

Smacks is just interested in your work and wants some honest answers. With your consistantly defensive posture you see almost any question as an "attack". I don't know what it is but as a professional I would think you would want to satisfy his curiosity rather than reply with your own personal attacks. This is just about boats. I think saying Smacks is envious of you is a bit silly. You do not know the man.

 

Brent, I think if you would go and read the stuff on s/v Silas Crosby you would see that Smack IS directly quoting your customer. So the thing to do would be to tell us how you would explain the difference in what the owner of s/v Silas Crosby had to say and what you were saying, because there IS a great difference in the two, and were I you I would do it in a way that did not piss off my clients past or possibly future.

Sailors tend to play rough, we tend to be blunt, and we tend to expect other sailors to be able to take it as they dish it out, however, as a very experienced manager of sales staff I can tell you that your customers will not want you dogging them out and basically calling them liars. Sailors or not, they are not going to want to pay for the privilege of being called names. So, try to clean up your messes, stop putting down everyone else's choice of building materials, and expound on the good points of your own while also being able to admit that your favorite material does have it down side as well.

In short, try not to make it seem that you are implying that every other material, and every other designer are inferior to your material and design method, people really find that very offensive.

 

+1

 

Right, another 1,000 or 2,000 lbs in the keel structure .Right on, closer to 1,000 lbs,exactly as Steve said,. After ther passage of 21 years the memory of how many hours I spent on her fades, especialy someone elses hours.
You guys keep forgeting I am retired and if someone would rather buy a plastic boat and risk his life among the debris, I dont give a rat's ass if he doesnt buy my book or plans.
I do remember cruising for that summer, after having worked the month of june.
I make my book available to those who know better than to blow their cruising funds on commercialy made crap, when they can make far better boats and gear for a fraction the cost , themselves, the only ones I am interested in dealing with. Yes I enjoy shooting ducks off a fence especially the feather brained ducks who make such ridiculous comments that a wooden boat is stronger than a steel one. Such crap must be challenged, lest someone die from believing it.

 

BS:
Your knee jerk defensive posture makes you a very easy target Brent. As an MMA guy I would assume you know you can't be on defense all the time.
Personal attacks do not consitute an offense.

We love it when you tell us how to enjoy our lives.

 

I checked Steve's blog again, and see no mention of the boat being dead empty, while crossing an ocean. Can you cross an ocean in a completely empty boat, or predict exactly what amount of weight any owner will put aboard, as you imply I should be doing?

 

B S:
Just put the matter to rest by publishing one of your weight studies. That should do it. If nothing esle it will put the peanut gallery to sleep. Few things are more boring or NECESSARY than a weight study.

 

Are you implying that all owners of your boats put exactly the same things of exactly the same weigh in every one of your boats, or that you make that assumption when designing them?
Now that's naive, or dishonest! Go read Hal Roths calculation of the weight of ground tackle he used. Do you use the same numbers for weight calculations for your 35 footers? Did Spencer? Did his boat float on the waterline they said it would ? Not achance! Nor do yours fully loaded for cruising?
Someone earlier on this thread sugested that two boxes of stuff constituted a cruising load. The designer of my first boat, Kinny, calculated 200 lbs total for personal belongings. Now that's incredibly naive, or dishonest to get the numbers down. I have no idea of how much of a packrat any owner will turn out to be( and neither do you) and I'm honest enough to admit it, unlike some designers who claim to have telpathic knowledge of such maters. to get their numbers down to misleading, unrealistic promises.I give the empty weight, which is all any designer is capable of doing honestly, the rest is up to the owner which will vary widely. No two owners will put exactly the same interior in.

Gettin warm.Time for a swim,then another ice cream cone.

 

I have only dealt with two people who loved their pot and booze too much to finish their boat. One, after pulling the hull together, did nothinjg for several years onher. I volenteered 8 hours and in that time , including diigging the steel out of the grass grown over it , I had all the decks on in 8 hours. He did nothing more til he sold the boat to a freind, who had circumnavigated in one of my 36 footers (Island Breeze ). The new owner bought the bare hull in mid january and by june was headed out on a fisheries job in the boat.
When someone can do more in a few months than others can accomplish in years, it is not the building procces which is at fault.
If one has far more money than one knows what to do with, then buying new is irelevant. If one is short of money, and lack of money will shorten ones cruising time, only then is buying new foolish.

 

I'm not implying anything and as I read this thread we are talking about your boats not mine. Of course loads will vary from owner to owner and from time to time. But if we could see one of your weight studies we would have some benchmark to work from in discussing weight issues of BS designs.

I do weight studies in three stages:
Light ship or as launched
Half load or as you might typically find the boat at the dock on any given day
Full load, tanks full and a lot of personal gear and stores.

Of course, if you don't have a weight study you can publish I would certainly understand. I can't imagine someone who struggles with numbers like you do even doing a coherant and thorough weight study.

Here is MOBISLE a truly fast passage maker, at hull speed and on it's lines on it's way to Australia. A very good looking boat to my biased eye. Transom just kissing the water making use of every inch of sailing length. Of course I had a good weight study.

We'll wait for your weights.

 

Fuzzmeister:
I'm with you on Van de Stadt. They did some very good looking and very good performing boats. Talk to Estar/Evans. He loves his boat. Don't be confused and think that all steel boats have to look like BS designs.

 

You are right. Few look as good as BS designs. Most have full length chines, visible when the boat is in the water, unlike BS designs. I see a lot of steel boats going to a lot of trouble and expense to eliminate ugly, visible chines ,but I see few adding full length chines to a round bilged boat to make it look better.

 

Brent
I posted this a few days ago.
Unless I missed it, if I did I'm sorry talk to me about the paint.

Brent says his paint job has lasted 29 years. AllGrip is generally expected to last about 10 years so I wonder what paint he has used?

Maybe today's paint is not as good.

Brent I'm going to order your book for whatever that is worth.

As for the rest of you I don't read what Brent says as untruthful as much as from a different world.
We all end up on a different path of life. Some of us go to college, so military some big city business some farming etc.

I don't doubt that Brent has done exactly what he has said such as welding up a steel 36' hull in a couple days.
But I've been around long enough to know that a 45' to 50' hull might be a totally different thing.
The days are probably a little more that 8 hours.
There was significant preparation before the building started (days or weeks)
It is not going to look like a Catalina when it is done.
Fairing and painting can take as long as I want to play with it.
The chances of me being able to scrounge enough for the rig, interior, propulsion etc is not likely. That hasn't been my world.

So the chances of it working out for me is slim. I'm still going to buy the book because I admire people who do things differently from the norm and I might be able to learn something.

I think you all have to admit that a lot of what Brent says makes a lot of sense. Welded deck with no holes. Stainless rail with weep holes outboard etc.

I'll bet that their isn't a square inch of hull inside or out that is not inspectable. If every square inch of 1/4" steel is coated in a 1/16 inch of epoxy plus paint in side and out I could believe that all you have to do is touch up the paint once in a while.
Especially if anyplace their ever was any wear he welded in a piece of stainless.

The plywood interior was often scavenged so I doubt if it looks like a Sabre. It is probably painted with house paint but so what.

Trying to compare what Brent does to what Bob does doesn't make any sense at all. The product is too different. The people drawn to one or the other is too different.

I remember a story about some pirates that lost their ship on an island. They used the bowsprit from their wrecked boat as the keel to build a get-away ship and built it from what they could salvage from the big boat.
They build a forge and reworked iron they salvaged into whatever they needed.
It took a couple months but they sailed away.

This is one of my favorite stories.
That

I noticed that the website hosting it went down so I rescued it from archive.org and posted it on my site.
This guy built this boat from scratch in the jungle of latin america.
Shows that someone with a lot of skill, talent and determination can do.
I see Brent in the same category of these guys. A dying breed.

I'm still interested in the paint job Brent if you are still around.

 

As for the rest of you I don't read what Brent says as untruthful as much as from a different world.

David, I can kind of see your point. He's definitely from a different world. But there's no world I know of where it's okay to disparage your own customers and even other people's family.

The days are probably a little more that 8 hours.
There was significant preparation before the building started (days or weeks)
It is not going to look like a Catalina when it is done.
Fairing and painting can take as long as I want to play with it.

The chances of me being able to scrounge enough for the rig, interior, propulsion etc is not likely. That hasn't been my world.

So the chances of it working out for me is slim.

This is precisely the point I'm trying to make in this debate with Brent. The chances of success in building/completing/cruising a BS boat for ANY "cruiser wannabe" that doesn't have a great deal of foreknowledge and experience in steelwork and yacht systems (as well as a tremendous amount of time and money) is, as you say, very slim.

You sail a good bit. You understand boats. And you understand this reality. Do his potential "cruiser wannabe" customers who simply listen to his promises and read his book?

Brent is so entrenched in "his world" that he thinks it's the only world. Anyone that's not a part of it is a sucker, a shyster, or a fool. This is the problem. He is completely unable to be objective. And this makes him claim things that are obviously and provably not true.

I don't doubt that Brent has done exactly what he has said such as welding up a steel 36' hull in a couple days.

Actually, I don't doubt it either. But that's the problem - he passes this off as typical in the process. He can't grasp the fact that having decades of experience doing just this (as well as the proper tools and space necessary) is the key to being able to do it. A cruiser wannabe that listens to his claims thinks this is just how BS boats go together. He shells out the money for the plans, the steel, the tools, the space - then realizes it's not quite what he was promised.

If Brent could be honest about what it really takes a new, green boatbuilder to finish one of his boats, I would have some respect for him. Instead, he calls his customers liars, drunks and dope smokers for not doing what he promised them they could do. It's their fault - not his.

I have no respect for people like that.

Trying to compare what Brent does to what Bob does doesn't make any sense at all. The product is too different. The people drawn to one or the other is too different.

I totally agree with you here. There is absolutely no comparison. Yet, Brent claims that his designs and boats are inherently superior.

That is definitely a different world.

 

My steel came wheelabraded and primed with carboweld cold galvanizing zinc rich primer, 85% zinc dry weight. I touched up the welds with a similar product, washed all the welding smoke off, with first TSP then vinegar then water, let her dry, then gave her 5 coats of bar rust 235 brown on the hull, three coats inside, and four on the decks. The thicker the epoxy the better. This I covered ,for colour and UV protection with marine enamel. Epoxy gets continuously thiner under UV. I give her another coat of cheap marine enamel every few years. To get anything to stick to epoxy, you have to put your first coat of enamel or urethane on the last coat of epoxy, wet on wet. Otherwise it will fall off in sheets.If you are using epoxy tar, it will bleed thru and look like hell. Give it another coat in 24 hours, then leave it alone for several weeks, to harden up well. Then you can put any colour you want over it , including white, and it will not bleed thru .
For commercial boats, where the epoxy is constantly getting knocked off, sandblasting and a buildup of zinc primer will not get knocked off, and can be overcoated with more zinc primer any time.

Waser makes good zinc primers.
Origamiboats, being as fair as any fibreglass hull, need no fairing, but if you have a hull you have to fair, then fairing is best done from the inside , with a hydraulic jack on a telescoping pole. Where the hull is dished inwards, you tack a length of flatbar on the inside of the bulge, then force it out with the jack ,and put several tacks along it. When you release the jack, it will stay fair, far more permanently that any filler. You can find the hollows with a flashlight, shone along the hull after dark. Do the whole inside of the hull this way, wherever there are hollows. Dont worry about what it looks like inside, that will be covered with many coats of epoxy tar and sprayfoam, and never seen again. It's the outside, and minimizing filler which counts.

 

need no fairing, but if you have a hull you have to fair, then fairing is best done from the inside , with a hydraulic jack on a telescoping pole.

That is clever. Wouldn't have thought of that.

What do you use for bottom paint or the more accurately the whole bottom maintenance process.

 

No Brent BS designs do not look good. They are in fact crude and pretty ugly boats. They are boats. I'll give you that. They are not yachts. You will never convince me otherwise. At 15 years old I knew that boats could look better than the designs you produce. If that was yacht design I would have chosen a diffent path.

But hell, ugly is good. Lots of people like ugly. Not sure why.
I think you are on very thin ice when you talk about aesthetics.

But you still manage to try to change the subject everytime a reasonable question is asked. You refuse to go head to head. Weasel.

About that weight study? Are you going to post it or just weasel out and try to once again change the subject. You weasel well.

 

Bob. This contradicts your earlier posts.. You have some of the best looking boats out there, second only to mine. If I emulated your hull shapes in steel, they would be horrendously expensive, time consuming,"Miss Bondo's." Different materials call for different shapes.
No argueing with the weight given by a government highway scale.
Bedtime. Getin dark, too dark to see.

 

Wow that was smooth.From weight to insulting someones wife.I bet you make friends all over.

 

Smacks:
Brent doesn't know my wife apparently and I do not need an apology. His comment was one made out of desperation to change the subject. What's next? "Yoiu mother wears army boots"? He's a real class act.

 

I am interested in something. Honestly.

Are there people out there reading this thread who are interested in building a steel boat? If so, what do you think about all this?

 

Smack,

I am pretty experienced at working in sheet metals, and I have gotten paid a lot of money to weld stuff that was x-rayed, pressure tested, and inspected very tightly, and I would not attempt to build a steel boat unless I was in a full service sheet metal shop with a plasma cutting table, a heavy steel break, roller, and all the rest of the stuff you would find in an industrial fabrication and machine shop.

I am fairly sure most wannabe cruisers do not have this, which as far as I can see is the only reason they would consider a BS design in the first place. I certainly would not build a blue water cruiser out of steel without using frames, because I would want to be able to isolate compartments using some of those frames, and I would want to have the rigidity that the frames would give not only my hull, but my deck and my cabin sole, plus that it would give a nice place to hang stuff that I wanted to mount, like conduit and plumbing.

I certainly am among the few I know with the skills to do the job, though I am far out of practice, I have not forgotten, and I still do some welding and fabrication for a couple of charity organizations from time to time. Most people are not certified welders, do not have any skills in working sheet metal, and certainly do not have a shop with overhead cranes, welding machines, torches, plasma cutters, grinders, a brake, a roller, or a sheer and this stuff is expensive.

This little gem is $24,500.00 and you would need it to build a steel hull boat of any size or you would need to pay someone to use theirs.

By the way, if you have one of those and a press roller and all the other stuff in a nice big high ceiling shop, say 80 feet high, located directly on the waterfront please feel free to contact me, we might be able to build something.

 

I get to go sailing today. Yippeeee! I have a new custom boat client and he wants me to sail with him on his currrent boat so we can go over the features he wants on the new boat. It's a nice day here so it should be fun. I'll leave you guys to deal with BS. Clearly he does not want to show us a weight study. Don't think he has one. Just asking to see one seemed to push him over the edge. I could post the weights for the SLIVER project. Not sure what that would accomplish though. So far we are within 200 lbs. of the predicted weight. If we can stay aroound 200 lbs. I'll be happy. Given the fact that the boat is a daysailer I don't have to deal with a big variable as far as "personal effects" goes. The client is fastidious about keeping junk off the boat.

 

An awful lot of steel boats get built by an awful lot of uncertified welders without big shops.
In fact, most of them.
Hundreds of steel fishtugs upwards of 60 feet in length have been constructed locally over the last century, wit no plasma cutter in sight, in the open air, by small shipyards.
They ain't pretty, but they work.
It's not rocket surgery.
But, like ferrocement, it doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense anymore, with a glut of boats on the market that can be had for far far less than the materials to build a boat.

 

An awful lot of steel boats get built by an awful lot of uncertified welders without big shops.
In fact, most of them.
Hundreds of steel fishtugs upwards of 60 feet in length have been constructed locally over the last century, wit no plasma cutter in sight, in the open air, by small shipyards.
They ain't pretty, but they work.
It's not rocket surgery.
But, like ferrocement, it doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense anymore, with a glut of boats on the market that can be had for far far less than the materials to build a boat.

Boats, not yachts, sailing yachts are meant to be beautiful creatures, works of art in motion, not a bathtub with a sail hoisted above it. To build a living creature like a truly beautiful yacht you do not do it in such a grotesque manner, you also would not wish to slap together the bride of Frankenstein type things I have seen as BS designs. A true steel sailing yacht is not built in some Godawful cow lot with bubble gum and bailing wire, it is lovingly crafted by artisans in a controlled environment where they have the equipment, time, and shelter needed to work on bringing her to life as a fluid sculpture, a melding of land, sea, air, and water in a thing of beauty, not some garbage scow with a sail.

 

yeah, okay.

 

I don't know if people have failed to recognize it or if they simply reject the concept but I understand where BS is coming from.

His priorities (ONLY priorities it appears) are cheap, relatively simple construction and ultimate survivability at sea - icebreakers as it were.

Aesthetics other than the brutal, purely functional workboat type, simply don't enter into his philosophy.

That is simply a lack of artistry IMHO. Bob & I wrote earlier about a local log salvage boat named Beach Boy that was designed by Garden. It is absolutely beautiful and a log boat has as hard a life as any boat out there. Most of them look much of a muchness with BS's boats from an aesthetic POV but Beach Boy proved they don't have to - you simply have to care about it and have a designer with some artistry.

I find BS's origami process interesting but I'd sure like to see one done with the aforementioned artistry, especially re: the deck structures.

 

Lots of steel boats have been built by amatures in less then ideal conditions.IMHO there are even some good looking ones with chines.The Wylo II comes to mind.Folded plate construction(Origami) has been around for a while.Its not "Brents" he didnt originate it.He did not originate DIY either.He didnt invent ocean cruising,sailing, welding, or anything else as far as I can tell.The claim that he "pulls a hull and deck together' really means he has only tack welded it together.Its far from a complete shell.There is still many hours of welding to go just to get a empty shell.You can save alot of money fabricating fittings,using discarded wood for an interior.But even cheap epoxy is expensive(Yogi Barra?).For my area just a space to build in is expensive as hell.Trevor Robertson built his wylo Iron Bark in 2 years.Hes sailed her 100,000+ miles including wintering over in Antartica and Greenland. This is and interview with him and Annie Hill.Annie Hill & Trevor Robertson - YouTube
He seems like a nice guy.He probably wont insult your wife or belittle you for your choices.

 

Trevor Robertson built his wylo Iron Bark in 2 years.Hes sailed her 100,000+ miles including wintering over in Antartica and Greenland. This is and interview with him and Annie Hill.Annie Hill & Trevor Robertson - YouTube
He seems like a nice guy.He probably wont insult your wife or belittle you for your choices.

Holy CRAP! Now these are people I can respect.

Look at this!

Iron Bark's travels

Go the Trevor and Annie!

 

^^^This, friends, is what happens when you wait just a little too long for winter haulout in Ontario.

 

Heh-heh. I have some very deep sympathy for you guys in the winter. That's brutal.

I'll raise a warm beer northward this January and have a moment of silence while I adjust my flip-flops.

 

I have read this thread from beginning to end and would wish to offer the following observations.
1.I took the commercial welding course at the local voc. school when deciding if I wanted to have a steel/aluminuim boat. I wanted to know about TIG/MIG welding,use plasma cutters etc. I figured if I went that way even if I had K+M or Kanter build the boat for me at least I would know what was a good yard, what was good construction,what was good 5k series Al or 3 series SS etc.
2.I have sailed on AL and Fe boats. and at one time was very close to buying a Boreal
Fe can be done well. In general it is cheaper, faster and safer to have it done by a professional yard. For me the calculations showed it was cheaper to have a professional yard do it as I could make more money at my day job per hour then they cost per hour given they are so much more productive with that hour. Also availability and expense of subsequent innsurance etc. needs to be factored in. Fe make sense at >50-60' but not below.
Al requires great skill and a controlled environment to be done correctly. Design of all systems not only the structure of the boat must be done and installed keeping the issues with Al foremost in mind. It is a material which is very viable for boat construction but in my view can only be done effectively in a professional yard to design made orginally for Al.
Owners of metal boats need an additional knowledge base concerning the issues germaine to metal construction and maintenance. The Metal Boat Society was a good resource for me.
I went with solid glass hull and divynicell core deck/house etc. Hannah2 went with Al professionally built. Both are good decisions for "blue water boats". In the current era unless one wishes to go slowly, can avoid going to weather, have very limited comforts,can spend years of their life getting a boat ready for sea and can self insure a BS boat makes little sense.
I would encourage the OP to google the Dutch/French yards, speak with surveyors and see/sail vessels in this catagory before making the jump.

 

I respect people who sail to Greenland, Antarctica,NW passage but for me no thanks!.I want to be in an area that can natively support coconuts.San Francisco is bloody cold as far as I am concerned;-).