What's the difference between a houseboat and a mouseboat?...
well, a houseboat is obviously an expensive craft, especially if moored in certain cities around the world and decorated by a top interior designer. A mouseboat..well, that's a bit different...much like the Puddle Duck Racer, they are a type of homebuilt boat that can be knocked together cheaply and give great fun for not a lot of dosh or time, like the PD Racer, it has a vibrant online yahoo community.
Gavin Atkin, Boat designer and editor of the highly popular blog: Intheboatshed.net and author of the book Ultrasimple Boatbuilding introduces to us his plans for the Minimouse and why this is an ideal boat for a family project.
The Minimouse has its origins back in the late 1990s, when Connecticut teacher David Colpitts ran some summer classes. He had the idea that it would be good for the youngsters in his care to build small boats using a minimum of materials.
To cut the story short, we met in Connecticut, and after a couple of tries, our answer was the original Minimouse, a little paddler made from just eight plywood panels.
The resulting boat couldn't be much smaller or simpler while remaining suitable for people weighing up to 180 pounds or so. It paddles pretty well, and provides a stable, comfortable platform that's just right for kids and adults enjoying their first boating experiences.
It can be carried by an adult in one hand, yet has all the rigidity you could want. There's a large volume of built-in buoyancy to keep you afloat in the event of a capsize—so much, in fact, that even when it's full of water, it's not too difficult to right the boat, climb back in, and then bail from inside. It will comfortably allow you to lie in the sun or creep up a tiny stream, and will also let you stand up just enough to climb into another boat or up on to a dock.
Every household should have one...
Every household should have one...
Constructed cheaply from 1⁄4-inch (5 or 6 mm) exterior or preferably marine plywood, the Minimouse is probably simplest useful small boat imaginable. It requires a minimum of time, skills, tools, and materials, and can be built so quickly that it causes little disruption around a busy household.
It is also perfect for a first experiment in plywood boatbuilding.
The Minimouse can be built using the chine log method, but in practice, I think it's pretty clear that most get built using what we in the UK call stitch and glue (Americans call it tack and tape).
In this technique, the edges of carefully calculated panels are brought together, often using 'stitches' made of cable ties or carpet tape or a combination of the two, and the structure usually is then completed using a combination of fine glass tape and epoxy.
In the USA, however, some builders follow Dave Colpitts' original mega-cheap method, using the fibreglass tape builders use to joint plasterboard before plastering, and polyurethane adhesive. I'm in favour of building these small and simple boats in this cheap kind of way, so long as everything is cheap – there's little sense in mixing up very cheap ply and epoxy, or high quality ply with rough old poly glue and scrim.
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