Onward.

The first step in building a framed drift boat is building the ribs and right away we started discovering the problems with the plan (or lack thereof) that we'd bought.

The plan doesn't give the angle that the upright part of the rib attaches to the part that runs along the hull. You have to draw a full-size pattern on kraft paper for each rib to calculate the angle manually based on the dimension.

Talk about freaking lame!

The one piece of info that would have made building the ribs about a one hour job is missing, so then it becomes a 4 step process taking about half an hour per rib. Measure, draw 1/2 the rib as a full size pattern, finally you get the angle because you can measure it on the pattern, then you can finally build the rib.

BTW, I know I could have measured the angle off the blueprint, but how do I know the blueprint of each rib is drawn to perfect scale such that it's reliable? As it turns out, it wasn't so good thing I didn't go this route.

Jeff and I built the ribs in one day back in March. I'll add some photos of the construction details.

A quick word on the choice of wood for the boat. We're using premium pine for the all the rib parts and that's almost 100% down to two factors: Cost and availability. I know there's better, more naturally waterproof choices like spruce, fir, cedar, etc, but they are easily 2 times or more the cost.
Also there's the problem of lumber availability these days. Try finding a 12 or 14 foot cedar that isn't full of knots. In your average lumberyard or Home Despot it just isn't happening these days.

Years ago, I can actually remember helping my dad resaw construction lumber to make boards because the lumber was so good back then you could get away with that. In my garage I've been saving some 16 foot 2x4 boards that I found at an auction sale. They are true dimension, clear spruce with not one single knot in any of them. That kind of lumber is almost non-existent these days unless you have direct access to a mill.

Here's a couple of detail shots of the rib construction as seen after the boat was attached to the strongback.

The half-lap joints. All fasterners are stainless steel or silicon bronze and the glue is polyurethane so it's waterproof:



And here's a picture of the boat as it stands today:







We decided to do half lap joints on each rib instead of just laping the wood and driving in screws. I think the half lap joint in the picture looks better and produces a stronger joint.