The Build Begins - Lofting and Cutting

The West Mersea Duck Punt is often referred to as a "little" boat. Trust me, at 16ft (4.8m) long it is anything but!

The first construction challenge was to find somewhere to build the darned thing. My own garage couldn't cope, but amazingly, a good neighbour, Frank Bond agreed to let me use his (much longer) garage to build the Punt in. Put simply, without Frank's generosity this project would have remained a pipe-dream. How do you say 'thanks' to people like Frank? I'll find a way... So, the plywood, epoxy resin, glass tape and cloth etc were ordered, and the build began.

I started by 'lofting' the measurements for the side panels from the A4 plans onto the 1200 x 2400 plywood sheets.

6mm ply is very difficult to handle - bends and sags all over the place. I later saw sense and got some lengths of timber to lay lengthwise under the plywood. Much better!

6mm ply was laid across a couple of saw horses.
A tape measure was gaffer-taped along the edge.
Then a large T-square was used to measure and mark
the points of the panel curves.

Panel pins were driven into the marked points, then a length
of plastic conduit was pegged to them, giving a smooth curve.
A sharpie was drawn along the edge of the conduit
to mark the cutting lines

The Flo-Mo plans suggest using a Japanese pull saw
to cut the panels. I broke mine on the third stroke...