# Dory design: discussion around the virtual campfire



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

Copy that lol


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

MNichols said:


> Yep, am a traditioonal ribbed boat guy. More cause that's what I learned from Brad Dimock than anything else.. My big boat, Bears Ears was made that way, and I couldn't find any fault with it. Bitttersweet that she's gone now, but she was simply too big for my tired old ass to row. I think traditional Briggs designs are stronger at the end of the day, by what percentage is debatable, like the thought that should it need repairs, you can span the plywood between bows, as opposed to trying to scarf into a sheet with no real support. Have nothing against a stitch and glue boat, I own one and damn near just bought one that a friend built, but were I to embark on a new build, it's a 90% chance it'd be a traditional ribbed Briggs design.





MT4Runner said:


> imho theglass is stiff enough to hold a screw.
> It all comes down to your preferred maintenance regimen.
> 
> and “boat soup” does smell lovely.





MNichols said:


> I love boat soup, and especially the use if it negating the need to sand everything that's varnished / epoxy every couple years and recoat.
> 
> The glass may be stiff enough to hold s screw, but just barely if at all. It'd be interesting to see just what it would hold vs cedar.. I'm thinking it'd not be much of a contest, not to mention getting one out for another repair..





MT4Runner said:


> I mean glass/wood/glass holding a screw, not a single layer of glass. the wood holds the screw, the glass keeps the wood from splitting. And could always back up a screw with a scrap block the same you'd do on a ribbed boat if the hole location didn't land neatly between ribs.
> 
> And wasn't implying the screw would be glued in with epoxy...but if you do glue in a screw, heat it with a soldering iron and it will soften the epoxy enough to back it right out.





MT4Runner said:


> Chine logs/chine bumpers would be an interesting sidebar discussion.
> 
> Everywhere else you can sustain damage "you never know" so you may as well be prepared to be flexible and make a repair.
> But EVERYBODY takes chine dings. A rubber bumper on the outside prevents the minor stuff...but doesn't do anything for a big rock strike.
> ...





MNichols said:


> Even if I were to build a stitch and glue boat, I think I would absolutely find a way to put chine logs in, Even if it meant running some ribs across the width of the boat to support them.
> 
> Edit. All of the damage I have taken with wooden boats, and my aluminum one for that matter, was in the chine area.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

If chine logs are that important, would it be a good consideration to build them out of something really burly like ash (even with the weight penalty) rather than port orford cedar?


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

That certainly a thought, I hadn't considered it. I believe Brad makes his out of ash, as well as the gunnels, and if he's doing that, there must certainly be a reason...


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

His doryaks are 100# heavier and a foot shorter than my mini dory...so that weight has to come from somewhere!! And wood itself is way heavier than layers of glass.


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

And way stronger than glass, just saying....


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

Why do you glass your floor?

more why not 1/2” plywood everywhere?


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

One glasses the floor to seal it more than anything, and why not half inch everywhere? Ask Mike g, wild thing was built out of half, and 3/4 in plywood. Weighed in close to 900 lb lol One reason he now owns wild child, and not wild thing lol


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

MNichols said:


> One glasses the floor to seal it more than anything,


This is why I glass everything.

After seeing 50 year old Makaha with thin glass on some sections of the deck and no cracking or checking in those areas, I am convinced by the long-term longevity of glassed wood


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

MT4Runner said:


> This is why I glass everything.
> 
> After seeing 50 year old Makaha with thin glass on some sections of the deck and no cracking or checking in those areas, I am convinced by the long-term longevity of glassed wood


50 year old Makaha in a thin glass sounds like a fine cocktail 😆😂


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## Idaho_ski_bum (Jun 22, 2018)

MNichols said:


> 50 year old Makaha in a thin glass sounds like a fine cocktail 😆😂


I'll take one on the rocks at your Dory Party!


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

No, dories need to be neat...never on the rocks!! haha


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## BenSlaughter (Jun 16, 2017)

Here's an interesting comparison on strengths of different wood species, with the weights of the wood included.






Spoiler alert: Just like Clint said in Pale Rider: "There's nothin like a nice piece of hickory"


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

BenSlaughter said:


> Here's an interesting comparison on strengths of different wood species, with the weights of the wood included.
> 
> Spoiler alert: Just like Clint said in Pale Rider: "There's nothin like a nice piece of hickory"


That's absolutely fascinating. It would also have been interesting if he had measured the deflection at breakage. I noticed the Red Oak bent a LOT before ultimate failure and continued to take a load as it bent and bent and bent and bent. Maple (as expected) is hard but brittle and when it failed, it went with a BANG!
IMHO the white oak and the ash weren't representative of those species. Did you notice they both had pretty bad grain runout? They broke diagonally. If they were straight-grained, they should have been there with/above the red oak. The hickory was beautifully straight-grained (and also plain-sawn).

I appreciate that he took the time to make his pieces identical, weighed and measured them, and even gave a cost comparison. Super cool when "regular" people get curious and do experiments. In a lab setting, one might have used more pieces of each species to minimize variation in individual boards.

As I noted in the other thread (quote below) grain runout is your enemy, even more than species selection....and for this reason, laminating wood if you can't find perfectly straight wood will help to minimize the weak spots where grain crosses the board.



MT4Runner said:


> You DO want straight-grained wood. Having woodgrain cross the entire member of a rib or an oar means you have a very very weak spot. Strain and cracks follow the grain. Tight knots in an otherwise straight-grained board are better than perfectly clear wood with grain that crosses the board on a close diagonal.
> ...
> Again, wood is your heaviest boat component, so choose wisely.


Wanna go down another rabbit-hole? That guy is building wagons. Original wagons wouldn't have had wood from the lumberyard downtown; the wagon builder probably cut his own trees or hired someone else to cut and haul them. And then they didn't have a mill or a table saw, and the wood would have been split with sledges and wedges..and then a froe. And...

.._can you see where I'm going with this?_ ... the eveners would have been made with wood split along the grain and there would have been zero grain runout...so they could have been a smaller/lighter section for the same strength or a much much stronger part for the same size as a sawn part. And back to the hickory...it weighed 44% more than the ash. Would a piece of ash the same weight but a larger dimension have been stronger or as strong as the hickory? Quite possibly.









How To Use A Froe To Split Green Wood W/ Elia Bizzari


Learn how to use a traditional froe to split green wood. Elia Bizzari teaches how to steer the froe to control the direction of the split.




woodandshop.com


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## atg200 (Apr 24, 2007)

I remodeled my home extensively with hickory - floors, stairs, shelves, railings, etc. It is beautiful, but it is the most splintery wood I have ever worked with. I am constantly glueing down large splinters that seem to pop out for no reason. As much as I love the look, I wouldn't use it again cosmetically and I would never use it for something like a boat.

I'm loving these conversations. I'm hoping to start building a dory before long, and reading these keeps me going trying to convince my wife to let me use half the garage for a year.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

MNichols said:


> Yep, am a traditioonal ribbed boat guy. More cause that's what I learned from Brad Dimock than anything else.. My big boat, Bears Ears was made that way, and I couldn't find any fault with it. Bitttersweet that she's gone now, but she was simply too big for my tired old ass to row. I think traditional Briggs designs are stronger at the end of the day, by what percentage is debatable, like the thought that should it need repairs, you can span the plywood between bows, as opposed to trying to scarf into a sheet with no real support. Have nothing against a stitch and glue boat, I own one and damn near just bought one that a friend built, but were I to embark on a new build, it's a 90% chance it'd be a traditional ribbed Briggs design.





MT4Runner said:


> _What type of hull material?_
> 
> Both wood construction methods have pros and cons. Between ply on frame and S&G, both have their devotees, and they're both right. No matter what, boats need care and maintenance, and you need to take care of them....and either will last decades with some TLC and you will probably not be the final owner of either boat. I'm a S&G guy, but I'll honestly tell you: aluminum or foam core arguably have the lowest maintenance of all!
> 
> ...


I ruminated on this a bit more over the past week. No matter what, having a dory is a passion thing. I can think of few to no people who get into whitewater with a dory as their first boat (drifters maybe). You do this because you're looking for something more from your experience on the river.

So build the boat that makes YOUR heart sing. You'll spend hundreds of hours in the shop building her and hopefully hundreds of hours lovingly shepherding her down the river and avoiding rocks. She should first and foremost be pretty to you and built however your means and skills allow. She's YOUR boat.


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

MT4Runner said:


> I ruminated on this a bit more over the past week. No matter what, having a dory is a passion thing. You'll spend hundreds of hours in the shop building her and hopefully hundreds of hours lovingly shepherding her down the river and avoiding rocks.


The whole avoiding rocks thing is what sucks lol but it does sharpen your scarfing skills at the end of the day lol


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## BenSlaughter (Jun 16, 2017)

Resilience, toughness, ability to take a shock-load would be an important factor. I suspect hickory is pretty good. Maple very poor. Ash pretty good.
Interesting- listening to baseball radio announcers discussing this. It's been proven that maple bats don't perform any better than ash bats, but maple does explode when broken, ash GENERALLY does not. Maple bats only gained favour after Barry Bonds(and his steroids) set the home run record using maple bats.

I've had the same experience with hickory splintering that atg200 speaks of(although I've never worked with wood more prone to long, awful splinters than CVG Doug fir). It would be interesting to find out if air drying vs kiln drying would make a difference....

Also, would one want to consider rot resistance? Or is the plywood going to become mush long before the frame?

I wonder how black locust would do in these tests?


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

Or osage orange/bois d'arc!


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## BenSlaughter (Jun 16, 2017)

I think he did mention in that video that he only tested "commercially common" woods. But it would be interesting to try some less common species...perhaps find the golden arrow!


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

I'll bet osage orange is known to him...IIRC it was a popular wood for wagon/coach builders.
I understand there are 100 year-old osage orange fence posts still standing and holding wire that haven't rotten yet. Incredible wood. Was also popular for indigenous bowmakers.


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## BenSlaughter (Jun 16, 2017)

I'm certain he knows about it, but it's unlikely you're going to go down to your local hardwood supplier and get a pies of 8\4x6 like he tested in the rest.

There was a pioneer in Central\Eastern Oregon who wrote a few books...his name escapes me at the moment...one line in his book that stuck with me was "I've got juniper fence posts that have worn out 3 sets of post holes" meaning he'd moved the fence 3x and re-used the same post. Very rot resistant. I imagine juniper would be great for boat building IIFFF you could find clear, straight grained lumber...which is nye impossible. It's also prone to twisting and warping... perhaps less of an issue if you could find it straight grained...


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

I have some 50+ year old juniper wood that my great-grandfather cut. The tops on these oars have juniper accents.










I'd be hesitant to cut any juniper today, it's not endangered, but it's extremely slow-growing and not exactly renewable...but since it was already cut, I'll hoard it and find places to utilize it. 
LMK if you want some...I have pieces up to 6" wide.


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## BenSlaughter (Jun 16, 2017)

Off topic here, but....

At least in this corner of the world, juniper is basically a weed. There are some "old growth" groves. That deserve to be saved, but through most of it's natural range, it was historically fairly sparse, and little more than a shrub, being thinned and stunted by the regular range fires. Today there are substantial eradication programs trying to reduce the density of juniper trees. They use a massive amount of water, starving native bunch grasses of moisture, and drying creeks. Unfortunately, it is rarely of any commercial(or natural) value.


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## Idaho_ski_bum (Jun 22, 2018)

Juniper berries make the gin-N-tonics taste nice!


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## BenSlaughter (Jun 16, 2017)

One of the thoughts I've had about dory builds-- that would certainly add some complexity (and a bit of weight} but would add some versatility, and get the boat on the water a bit quicker...
Rather than decking it, building compartments, what about building boxes to fit. 
Like I have my kitchen box for my raft that comes out, or perhaps a custom cooler for a rower's seat.
Again, I realize it would make the build more difficult, but when you're just going out for the day, you don't have all the additional weight of the compartments\decks.
Could just throw some flat seat frames in....

What do you fellas think??


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

I have actually thought about that as well. I have never built a wooden boat, but I too already have some gear or a way to rig gear. In theory, I can see it working, the con would be complexity, weight, and time (which you've already stated). Is it worth it though? That's what I can't wrap my head around. It's kinda like the cooler design. I thought about building an insulated hatch to fix that issue but seems like it's not needed. But that's what's cool about building a boat right? You get to design it yourself!


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

BenSlaughter said:


> One of the thoughts I've had about dory builds-- that would certainly add some complexity (and a bit of weight} but would add some versatility, and get the boat on the water a bit quicker...
> Rather than decking it, building compartments, what about building boxes to fit.
> Like I have my kitchen box for my raft that comes out, or perhaps a custom cooler for a rower's seat.
> Again, I realize it would make the build more difficult, but when you're just going out for the day, you don't have all the additional weight of the compartments\decks.
> ...


Sorry, missed this post earlier.

you gain flexibility but add weight. Your daytrip rigging would be much lighter...but your multiday boat would be much heavier. You'll be doubling up on your floors and side panels in the compartments rather than using the side panels and floors of the boat and connecting to them with the bulkheads.

The other significant drawback is that all that flotation trys to work against you INSIDE the boat. If you have 250 gallons of dry storage, that's nearly a ton of buoyancy. And if you get water underneath those boxes (which you will), that's A TON of buoyancy working INSIDE the boat that you're trying to restrain with straps/bolts/etc into the hull. Ever heard "you can float a battleship in a teaspoon of water"? This is in theory how you would do that.

But I was contemplating exactly this to make a drop-in box for my aluminum boat that would be about 4' wide and 8' long and have two side hatches, a rear cross hatch and a front cross hatch. Keep the boat light for day runs and have enough dry storage to run it multiday.




westwatercuban said:


> It's kinda like the cooler design. I thought about building an insulated hatch to fix that issue but seems like it's not needed. But that's what's cool about building a boat right? You get to design it yourself!


Coolers: generally not needed except on really warm-water rivers. You need your frozen food and cocktail ice in a cooler. Your beer sits on the hull and stays river temperature.


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

MT4Runner said:


> Coolers: generally not needed except on really warm-water rivers. You need your frozen food and cocktail ice in a cooler. Your beer sits on the hull and stays river temperature.


So if the hatch stays river temperature do you guys just use like a cooler bag with stuff that needs to be absolutely chilled? Sorry, this still boggles my mind. I know I've used drag bags for beverages to keep them cool. but always used coolers for perishables.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

I do use a rotomolded cooler for ice and steaks.

Veggies, beer, and everything else just goes belowdecks.
Sorry, "coolers generally not needed" depends on your menu. There are some dory people who love going cooler-less but that does involve creative menu planning and some canned food.


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

Okay now I follow, thank you for the clarification


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## duct tape (Aug 25, 2009)

On my last trip I only took a cooler for the ice. For rum tonics, of course.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)




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## BenSlaughter (Jun 16, 2017)




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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

My current rum go-to is Cruzan dark (really really good for a mid-tier rum) and mango nectar from Costco. Float a little Cruzan black strap or Goslings on it...mmmm..
















And don't blame me if some strumpet burns the rest trying to signal a ship to escape living with you on an island prison


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

Cuba libre is where it’s at!!..wife hates it..but that means more rum for me!


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## duct tape (Aug 25, 2009)

Mt Gay (Barbados) rum for me. W tonic and lime. Was highly popular on several dory parties.


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

These dory parties sound fancy..do I need to bring a suit?


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

westwatercuban said:


> These dory parties sound fancy..do I need to bring a suit?


Tux....


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

My bad..looks like I need to step up my class..
_*throws oar at valet - “keep it floating”_


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

westwatercuban said:


> My bad..looks like I need to step up my class..
> _*throws oar at valet - “keep it floating”_


Damn.. what did the valet do to you?


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

Are dory drivers snobs by definition? Quoted from a FB post from my friend Gary Lane:



[B said:


> Wapiti River Guides[/B]]
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

I think he hit it on the head, the whole article, but in particular this statement
But, behind the scenes, the other real story is that no one wanted to spend time fixing and/or painting boats between trips


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

I don't know many people who would love to see their work of art be bashed around so I can see how that would come off to others. However, I do agree with Martin, even though I do not own one..Dorys are beautiful.


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

westwatercuban said:


> Dorys are beautiful.


And without a doubt the most fun ride you can get on the water.. It's not like anything you've ever experienced before, especially in Grand Canyon, where you likely WILL test your repair skills at some point..


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

MNichols said:


> And without a doubt the most fun ride you can get on the water.. It's not like anything you've ever experienced before, especially in Grand Canyon, where you likely WILL test your repair skills at some point..


The ride in a kayak is similarly soul-stirring...but you can't haul your bedroom, kitchen, bar, dance floor, music instruments, and a couple close friends in one kayak. You can't pee off of a kayak, you can't sleep on a kayak, you can't invite 8 friends to come sit down for a kayak party. A raft is a school bus, a dory is a sports car...a kayak is a motorcycle. Motorcycles scare me, but they're awesome.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

I've been kayaking now for 25 years. I love it. I love the control and the way they move in the water.

But I love dories more. I have slightly less control, but love the way they move in the water...the history, the stories, the way they look. But don't run a dory if you don't want to be noticed, they're definitely head-turning.


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

Okay question…are dory’s more environmentally friendly?


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## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

westwatercuban said:


> Okay question…are dory’s more environmentally friendly?


Of course they are, made from all natural and organic materials !!! [ but then so is Horse Manure 🤣 ]

Obviously I'm talking about a traditional Briggs or McKenzie wooden Dory, not a rotomolded plastic or fiberglass copy of one. Now days I hear they are making them from engineered materials similar to corraplast and such, but trad boats are totally environmentally friendly as one can get..


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## westwatercuban (May 19, 2021)

I was just thinking the other day where someone was commenting how oil and gas is causing the west to dry up. But if it wasn’t for oil and gas your brand new raft with all of the gear you bought literally would not exist if it wasn’t for it. So I felt like some folks are a bit disconnected. Then it got me thinking about a Woden dory and how most of it is build by sustainable materials.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

A traditional ribbed boat is WAY more environmentally friendly than a rubber boat. Often built with 2nd growth framing and somewhat rapidly growing hardwood plywood. (Doug fir ply probably more sustainable than meranti). It will decompose in a landfill or could be cared for and used for 50 years. That’s a stretch even for hypalon 

a stitch and glue boat is no worse than a raft. Maybe marginally better.


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