PT Watercraft

A row in the PT Eleven nesting dinghy

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 03:15:02 +0000

Thank you Randy, for surprising us with this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYMEamd3ME8

Randy’s channel also features the Boatschool cutting the PT 11 in half. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7xLYkaX4LA&feature=relmfu

Cheers! PTW

Last Call AUSTRALIA!!

admin — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:26:56 +0000

A shipment is headed for Australia and there is still time to get your kit onboard. Shared shipping cost is a benefit to all. The gentleman ordering is offering a super fair deal to share shipping costs, clear the shipment into Adelaide and hold the kit for fowarding or pick up. You can even work with him to pay in AU$..! He has really done the homework and as he really wants his kit, he is offering to do all the hassle for you. Please contact me right away if you want to get a PT Skiff KIT or PT 11 KIT to Australia as they need to be cut in the next week (May 7-11) to make the departure date. This kind of opportunity will not happen often. Cheers! PTW

Launchings at the NWSWB

admin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:05:52 +0000

Last week the NW School of Wooden Boat Building had a day of launching some of their recently finished boats. It was a casual gathering to which the PT Eleven nesting dinghy was invited. It was good for everyone to see the finished product since they are currently building one of our kits. Lots of people got to go for a row and chat about boats.

on the dock

Cooper's Kayak

boats launched

PT 11 demonstration

going for a row

PT11 at NW School of Wooden Boat Building

admin — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:44:23 +0000

We are please to report that the NW School of Wooden Boat Building is building a PT Eleven nesting dinghy as part of their contemporary boat building program. It is being built in their newly built, on campus facility, the Jeff Hammond building, especially designed to serve as a workshop for larger projects. The boat school students are working the Sliver project; a 62foot, Bob Perry designed super sleek, day sailor. Take note that the first photo is taken with an extremely wide angle lens. The boat in the background really is 62ft long.
The PT Eleven is being built along side the Sliver project. When completed, it will be for sale. If anyone is interested in purchasing a completed PT Eleven, they should contact Bruce Blatchley at the school. (see above NWSWB link) Russell says they are doing a really clean job so far.

Back to work

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:52:25 +0000

Hello All,.. I am back at work after 3 weeks out of the country. I was visiting family and snowed in up in the black mountains of southern France… far from boats…but I also spent time investigating the logistics of making our kits easily available to our European followers. I am a little bit closer to a viable solution. With our limited budget, it all takes real figuring and coordination. One thing that is clear, is that in order to keep shipping costs low, being able to ship at least 2 PT Skiff kits or 5 PT Eleven kits at once reduces the cost for each buyer dramatically. Ocean freight is calculated with a minimum volume so shipping one kit or 5 is nearly the same price. Import duties and clearance fees are being checked into in France and should provide a basic idea for most of Europe. There have been discussions about having kits cut in Europe but we find this to be more complex. It simply is not possible at this stage to have someone in Europe make all of the parts. Besides the fact that our kits have parts cut from 5 different thickness of plywood, there are lumber, carbon, fiberglass, and stainless steel specialty parts. We will avoid any kind of fractured production ideas. Our quality expectation is very high and it will be a good while before we have all the glitches worked out so that someone else could reproduce our kits to our standards.

On another note, we will have a PT Eleven on display at the NW Maritime center symposium happening here in Port Townsend on March 16, 17, & 18th. This cruising theme event has a limited number of tickets available so if you think you would like to attend, follow this link and get more information. The presenters scheduled promise to make this a very interesting weekend. We are nearing completion of the current PT Eleven nesting dinghy, which has been a bit on the back burner. Russell has had other projects demanding his attention. Symposium participants will be able to take it out for a row at various times over the weekend.

We have lots of posts in preparation so we hope you will stay tuned.

Black Mountains farm in one of the coldest winter snaps in 60 years.

A Bumper for the PT Eleven

admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:55:45 +0000

A good bumper for the PT 11 has been a priority since the beginning.
We have seen lots of different dinghy bumpers over the years, lots of them falling off or the rails falling off because of all the fasteners used to hold the bumper on.
We know that bumpers on dinghies are a challenge and we have tried different types; the favorite being 3/4” braided nylon rope glued into a notch on the outside of the gunwale. This bumper but was very hard and probably quite heavy when wet, but it lasted over 20 years, and never came un-glued.
The gunwale on the PT11 (as well as the rest of the boat) has to be sealed against moisture intrusion for longevity, so installing a bumper with fasteners is out of the question, unless you are willing to replace the gunwale periodically.
The most highly recommended dinghy bumper is a round closed cell foam covered with a fire hose like canvass material. This is usually attached with hundreds (I’m not kidding) of screws or ring nails, but could be glued on. See following photo.
The challenges with this bumper are:
1.How to finish at the ends. It can’t just be cut as the foam would be exposed and the canvass will fray. Usually the foam is cut short and the canvass folded over and sewn, but in a nesting dinghy this would have to be done at all 4 bumper ends at the joint between the hull halves as well as at the transom and would likely need fasteners at these points.
2. it adds to the overall width of the boat.
3. it would be difficult to install straight and clean and may not look so hot.
4. it would be very heavy when wet. … Oh, and it’s very expensive..(nearly $10/ft)

All the above is to explain how we arrived at the glue-on extruded rubber bumper.
We originally were planning a C-shaped section that would glue over the outer edge of the gunwale, but it would have to be glued on with something other than a contact adhesive and there would be challenges at the stem, transom, and in fitting around the oarlock riser blocks.
Thus we came to keeping the outer edges of the gunwale square and gluing a custom extruded bumper to the 1” wide flat present on the outer edge.

The bumper shown in the following photos was designed by us for the PT 11 and made by a manufacturer who makes rubber bumpers (chafe guards) for inflatables.
These bumpers are made from non-marking compounds and can be glued on with Hypalon glue, the same glue used to attach this type of rubber to inflatables.

Gluing this bumper on to a PT 11 is a bit of a process. The hypalon glue is two-part, stinky, and must be applied in a dry area. Being a contact adhesive, no clamping pressure is needed, but you only get one chance to put the bumper on straight.
Repairing sections of this bumper would be quite easy and could be done with a one-part contact adhesive.

The die used to make our bumper will be modified slightly and another prototype made before we order the huge quantity necessary for a minimum order.

An instruction booklet will be included with the bumper kits.
PHOTOS

gluing on the bumper

We are pleased to be able to offer this bumper fairly soon and, it looks like we can list it, 26ft with Hypalon glue for $195.
Contact us for more info..

Time lapse experiment of Gloss Coating

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:03:27 +0000

This is my first experiment with time lapse photography and I am not altogether pleased. The gloss coat came out great but, time lapse isn’t like video, is it? With the time lapse, however; we get to cram an hour into 2 and a half minutes.
What this does not show is the thorough de-dusting. The surfaces were first cleaned with a vacuum and brush attachment, and then gone over with clean cotton rags. Next were multiple light handed passes with a tack rag. Remember that if your tack rag shows dust on the surface, it means there is still a lot of dust left. Opening up the tack rag completely and lightly bunching it is the most effective usage.

The reason we wanted to do a time lapse video is that this is a rather challenging part to gloss coat all in one go. Notice using a bristle brush and a narrow roller under the transom inwhale, and then shifting to a wider roller for the larger areas. Using a brush is asking for drips and it is a challenge to keep the coating thin enough that it doesn’t drip. The heat gun helps a lot in evenly brushing out a very thin coating of epoxy. The heat gun is set on low and always kept moving and well away from the surface.

The other area where the bristle brush is used extensively is around the hardware and gussets. No matter how thin you brush your epoxy on, there will likely be drips forming below the taped off hardware. These can be picked up with the foam brush.
Notice that we start this operation by coating the holes in the transom inwhale and the bulkhead. Any drips that form from coating these holes will be picked up when the surfaces are coated.

(We cropped out frames where nothing was happening because glue was being mixed)
Click the link to see the video or visit our Youtube channel. RB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irLfmpK2BYQ

PT 11 sail clarification

admin — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:23:31 +0000

I just revised my explanation on the previous post and that text is now in brown. I realized it was not very clear and had Russell help me out with a better description. Cheers!

Setting up and packing up the PT eleven sailing rig

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:13:07 +0000

I have just posted a youtube video of setting up and packing up the sailing rig for the PT Eleven nesting dinghy. This is something I was supposed to do before the Christmas holidays, and, well, I forgot. The foils you see are the foils that we provide as a kit and details are on ptwatercraft.com. The sail was our first design, though this video was taken before we trimmed up the foot just a little. We have a new design that has 2 short battens instead of the full one at the top. It is sleeved on and is really easy to manage. The shorter batten allows for a looser sleeve. Since we have had requests for a sail with a zipper luff for use with a halyard, we can now use the same design with a couple of hours additional labor to offer as an alternative. Having a halyard also means altering on the mast and adds complication over the sleeved luff. The total weight of this rig is only 13 LBS.

Prices for sails are still unknown. To have them made locally, they would cost $750-800. We are currently awaiting a quote from an offshore sail maker. ..Bummer to have to go offshore but the buyer can choose local artisan sails or production sails based on what they would rather pay. Luckily for some, principle can still outweigh cost, and we can offer that choice if someone wishes.
The mast and boom are also not yet priced. I hope we will have a price idea very soon. Being a little company as we are, it is a bit of a trick to get the carbon spars wholesale in small quantity.
To view the new video, click here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP3N_qTqPEo&list=UUVkWkVo0rpJ1I3xgJjmYUFQ&index=1&feature=plcp or visit our ptwatercraft channel. Cheers and Happy New Year! (changed the link for the video so I did not have to use Youtube music!)

PT Eleven Feature

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:10:06 +0000

It has been weeks since we posted…Russell has been building a new PT Eleven in the shop while ironing out details in the manual. I have been re editing the manual and shuffling photos and chapters around, among other things. In between all this and packing kits, Russell crated up our show boat and we shipped it to the east coast where it has just been christened “Wheels” and launched aboard it’s new mother ship, bound for the Caribbean and Pacific via Panama. We are very excited about the adventures yet to come for this boat.

Some of our brave first customers for the PT Eleven have launched into their projects and I look forward to even more posts soon on the PT Eleven Builder’s blogspot created just for this purpose.

It was brought to my attention that I had not posted about the current feature in Wooden Boat Magazine’s 2012 issue of “Small Boats”! It is a great article by Tom Jackson who came out just before the Boat festival and took the boat out for a “test drive”. If you have not checked it out yet, please do! It should be at your local news stand or here online: “2012 Small Boats”

Check out this latest issue