Learning About Building A Ship part two

Learning About Building Part 2

Picking up with where I left off from the last posting. I do need to mention that I do live very much near the Great Lakes and I could have gotten a “free” boat and towed it home but many are smaller sail boats- which would be nice when repaired- as a nice small sail boat but not the older looking pirate ship that I needed. The old, worn out, work boats found along the ocean coasts would be tempting, but as you have read in my last blog post that the alteration to a non-floating structure made this sort of operation impractical.

My early thought was to build the ship on dry land, making it look like a wreck that had been deposited on the sands of the shoreline. The Bristol Renaissance Faire has two ponds, one is called Lake Elizabeth and the other has no name that I know of and is more of a wetland then a water feature like Lake Elizabeth is. Lake Elizabeth is the pond located on the southern end of the faire property and has a long wooded bridge across it.

Building a structure on dry land is a very good idea and one that I would eventually wish to have stuck with. So if you have your own dreams of building something like the Dreadnought for your self I would suggest STRONGLY that you build it on land and keep it as a shipwreck.

The shipwreck idea allows the builder/owner to walk around the structure, put up ladders, scaffolding and what not all on a dry firm surface. Shipwrecks tend to be romantic looking to most people and that is a positive image. Yes a pirate ship on the water is impressive and fun but the work it takes to do the simplest things, like tighten a screw on a board a yard below the deck line on the outside of the ship, takes some thinking and skill. Yes it can be done but there are times when you do not want a challenge just to tighten a screw. And believe me when I tell people this and they come back with something like just tie a rope around your self and sling over the side--- well go ahead and try it yourself, once or twice or for all day in the cold or heat and see if you are up to the challenge. Dry land is the way to go. The other benefit is less amounts of moisture to deal with under the ship and with that cheaper building materials and methods.

So you can see that I have went from a Skull Cave display space, to a ship reworked, to now a shipwreck ship on the beach as a building to operate out of. What is next?

Thanks for reading.

Learning About Building A Ship part one

Learning about building a ship.

So now that I have figured that the potential is there to make some money, hopefully a bunch, I then set out to learn how to build something that looks like a ship.

My first thoughts are to do it as cheaply as possible. This is normal I believe for most people. The typical- I do not have a lot of money here so let’s see what I can get for less than $100,000- or what ever budget you (or me) may set.

Internet searching shows that nobody makes mock pirate ships that look remotely real, or usable by a good number of people. Playground buildings from pressure treated lumber are to be found, but they look box like, are too small for my use, and are just not right for me.

How about a used boat? I see that Wooden Boat Builder magazine carries “for sale” as well as “free boats” ads. The free boats look like deals. Just haul them away and use them. Well most are to be found along the great oceans surrounding the USA. That means a trip way out to California, New York or Florida. I should get a real trailer that will haul what ever it is that is free and then something to pull the trailer. Then again I have never pulled a boat or trailer before- and the boats I want need to be large, like over 60 feet. Now the boats that are free tend to need work and maybe they might not hold up on the ride home even. Well to shorten it up a bit I figured that the boat modifications, hauling, safety, and all of that would make “free” not such a good idea.

After reading up on boat building, small wooden boat stuff as well as the big reconstruction projects like Mayflower II and other replica ships, it seems that ship building methods applied somewhat to my project but not entirely. Cutting a free wooden ship into a usable structure would more than likely wreck the internal forces, the integral structure that keeps the boat together, and make for one flimsy wreck of wood. There seemed to be a tension between planking, ribs and beams that worked to hold the entire ship together.

I then began to think about how to build a ship that looks like a ship but is not a ship. That means a structure. I would take my lunch hours and nights at home and draw out rectangles and squares that represented the frame work, like in a building, and then began to lay over top of that the curved lines of the hull planking.

I had no computer program to do this for me; even if one existed I would not have bought it as at that time I was a paper and pencil guy. Even if I had one I would have had to learn a program that might have been beyond my skills with the computer. Frustration makes for poor brainstorming.

Weeks and months of drawing out ideas slowly saw me to coming up with a size and look I wanted. Working with paper and pencils got me to work through the thoughts and get some concrete sort of ideas down in visual form.

Thanks for reading!

Dreadnought For Sale- New Price

Well with the slow economy and all that we have made the choice to lower the price of the Dreadnought to $375,000 US dollars. This is reduced from the $475,000 that it was listed as. Thought we would let you all know here.

See our web site for more information about the Dreadnought structure at www.pirateshipdreadnought.com