x
Home
Search
Topics
Almanac
Science
Nature
People
History
Society
Signup
Login
HOME
TOPICS
ALMANAC
SCIENCE
NATURE
PEOPLE
HISTORY
SOCIETY
PHILOSOPHY
Stitch and glue
Topic Home
Discussion
0
Encyclopedia
Stitch and glue is a simple boat building method which uses plywood, epoxy glue, and "stitches" and eliminates the need for stems and chines. Plywood panels are cut to detailed profiles and stitched together to form an accurate hull shape, without the need for forms or special tools. This technique is also called "tack and tape", and "stitch and tape".

History

The stitch and glue method was developed by woodwork teacher Ken Littledyke for the manufacture of canoe
Canoe
A canoe or Canadian canoe is a small narrow boat, typically human-powered, though it may also be powered by sails or small electric or gas motors. Canoes are usually pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be decked over A canoe (North American English) or Canadian...

s, using plywood panels joined by fiberglass tape and resin. The technique was then popularised by the first TV
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 DIY expert, Barry Bucknell
Barry Bucknell
Barry Bucknell [Robert Barraby Bucknell] was a BBC TV presenter who popularised Do It Yourself in the United Kingdom....

, in about 1964. The method was adopted, substituting copper wire ties rather than fishing line as in the early Littledyke examples, for the construction of the Mirror Dinghy
Mirror (dinghy)
The Mirror is a very popular sailing dinghy, with more than 70,000 built.The Mirror was named after the Daily Mirror, a UK newspaper with a largely working class distribution. The Mirror was from the start promoted as an affordable boat, and as a design it has done a great deal to make dinghy...

. The Mirror is so named because the design was sponsored by The Daily Mirror newspaper, a fact reflected by the historically red sails. The Daily Mirror apparently wanted to bring cheap sailing to the masses. As such, unlike other construction techniques of the day, which required specialist skills and tools, Stitch and Glue was supposed to put boat-building within the reach of the average public.

Stitch and glue is similar to a traditional form of boatbuilding from northern Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, particularly Lapland
Lapland (region)
Lapland is a region in northern Fennoscandia, largely within the Arctic Circle. It streches across Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula . On the North it is bounded by the Barents Sea, on the West by the Norwegian Sea and on the East by the White Sea...

, called sewn boat
Sewn boat
A sewn boat is a type of wooden boat which is clinker built and held together with tendons or flexible wood, such as roots and willow branches. Sewn boat construction techniques were used in many parts of the world prior to the development of metal fasteners, and continued to be used long after...

s. It is not known if Littledyke's development of the stitch and glue methods was influenced by the sewn boat technique.

Technique

The technique consists of stitching together plywood
Plywood
Plywood is a type of manufactured timber made from thin sheets of wood veneer. It is one of the most widely used wood products. It is flexible, inexpensive, workable, re-usable, and can usually be locally manufactured...

 panels with some sort of wire
Wire
A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, flexible strand or rod of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads and to carry electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Standard sizes are determined by various...

 or other suitable device, such as cable tie
Cable tie
A cable tie, also known as a zip tie or tie-wrap , is a type of fastener, especially for binding several electronic cables or wires together and to organize cables and wires.-Design and use:...

s or duct tape
Duct tape
Duct tape, or duck tape, is cloth- or scrim-backed pressure sensitive tape often sealed with polyethylene. It is very similar to gaffer tape but differs in that gaffer tape was designed to be cleanly removed, while duct tape was not. It has a standard width of and is generally silver or black...

. Copper wire is popular because the wires can be twisted tighter or looser to precisely adjust fit, and because it is easy to sand after gluing, and it is suitable in a marine environment if left in place. To join, the cut panels are drilled with small holes along the joining edges and stitched. Once together, the join is glue
Adhesive
An adhesive, or glue, is a mixture in a liquid or semi-liquid state that adheres or bonds items together. Adhesives may come from either natural or synthetic sources. The types of materials that can be bonded are vast but they are especially useful for bonding thin materials...

d, usually with thickened epoxy and fiberglass on the inside of the hull.

On the outside of the hull, the wire is snipped and the joints filled and sanded over. The outside of the joint, or entire hull, may be fiberglassed and glued as well, providing additional strength. The combination of fiberglass
Fiberglass
Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...

 tape and epoxy
Epoxy
Epoxy, also known as polyepoxide, is a thermosetting polymer formed from reaction of an epoxide "resin" with polyamine "hardener". Epoxy has a wide range of applications, including fiber-reinforced plastic materials and general purpose adhesives....

 glue results in a composite material
Composite material
Composite materials, often shortened to composites or called composition materials, are engineered or naturally occurring materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties which remain separate and distinct at the macroscopic or...

 providing an extremely strong joint.

An alternative is to use dabs of thickened epoxy in between the "stitching" to join the panels, and after it has cured, completely remove the copper wires instead of just snipping them off on the outside. With the wires removed, you can go back and apply a fillet of thickened epoxy over the entire length of the join. Yet another technique is to use heat to remove the wires after the epoxy is cured.

True stitch and glue designs generally have few bulkhead
Bulkhead
Bulkhead may refer to:* Bulkhead, a compartment of a building for preventing spread of fires, see Compartmentalization * Bulkhead , a retaining wall used as a form of coastal management, akin to a seawall, or as a structural device such as a bulkhead partition* Bulkhead , a wall within the hull of...

s, relying instead on the geometry of the panels to provide shape, and forming a monocoque
Monocoque
Monocoque is a construction technique that supports structural load by using an object's external skin, as opposed to using an internal frame or truss that is then covered with a non-load-bearing skin or coachwork...

 or semi-monocoque structure.

Spread of the technique

Stitch and glue has become one of the dominant techniques in amateur boatbuilding. While the use of relatively few plywood panels (which minimizes the joints and makes the construction easier and faster) limits the shapes possible, the simplicity and low cost of the stitch and glue technique makes it the method of choice among most amateur
Amateur
An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....

 boatbuilders. Simple software CAD
Computer-aided design
Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...

 packages are available for designing stitch and glue boats, and there are many Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 bulletin board
Bulletin board
A bulletin board is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise things to buy or sell, announce events, or provide information...

s, newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...

s, and mailing list
Mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...

s dedicated to the subject of stitch and glue boats and various popular stitch and glue designs. Stitch and glue is not inherently limited to small designs though, as demonstrated by the boats made by Sam Devlin, who has applied the technique to making boats as long as 45 feet.

The one sheet boat

The one sheet boat, or OSB, is an outgrowth of the stitch and glue technique. The OSB is a boat that can be built using a single sheet of 4 foot by 8 foot plywood (1.22 m × 2.44 m). Some additional wood is often used, for supports, chines
Chine (boating)
A chine in boating refers to a sharp angle in the hull, as compared to the rounded bottoms of most traditional boat hulls. The term hard chine indicates an angle with little rounding, where a soft chine would be more rounded, but still involve the meeting of distinct planes. Chine log...

, or as a transom
Transom (nautical)
In naval architecture, a transom is the surface that forms the stern of a vessel. Transoms may be flat or curved and they may be vertical, raked forward, also known as a retroussé or reverse transom, angling forward from the waterline to the deck, or raked aft, often simply called "raked", angling...

, though some can be built entirely with the sheet of plywood. OSBs tend to be very small, since the displacement is limited to a theoretical maximum of about 1500 lb (680 kg), based on the largest hemispherical shape that could be formed with the same surface area as the sheet of plywood. Though forming a hemisphere is possible (see geodesic dome
Geodesic dome
A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When...

), it is not practical, and most designs have maximum displacements of under 1000 lb (450 kg), and practical displacements only large enough for a single person.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
Silverdale Interactive © 2024. All Rights Reserved.
 
x
OK