Introducing the Speed Pram

Designing new boats is my guilty pleasure

So when WoodenBoat School asked if I can create this new Pram, I jumped at the opportunity. We were looking for a new design to build in a week at the school and not the usualy skiff or rowboat, but a power boat! Specifically, a pram shaped power boat. Prams excel at load capacity and some folks love their aesthetic. They are certainly very functional. One of my missions has been to give people an alternative to the ugly, squishy RIB, or rigid inflatable boat. They are stable but ugly!

The Pram is a large, open interior with plenty of flotation and a moveable seat system.

The new course at WoodenBoat School is unique because we’ll be building one or two prototypes of this new design as a group. One or both may be available at the end of the class for participants to purchase. Students will learn a great deal about wooden boat building with plywood and epoxy using Chase Small Crafts unqiue building systems. While we build from modern kits, there are plenty of traditional boatbuilding methods at play: chine log construction, steam bending, using real hand tools, fasteners, and glues to form the boat. And you will also learn aspects of stitch and glue construction.

The 15-degree up forward helps with cutting through chop and getting the boat ona plane.

• pram hull shape that can take 4-6 people

• good performace under power with speeds above 10kts easily achieved

• max horsepower 10 hp or less

• buildable in a weeks time in a class from kits

• inspired by the Atkin Chatterbox design (had to capture that spirit)

SPECIFICATIONS AND DESIGN BRIEF

11’0” LOA

5’0” BEAM

18” DEPTH

DISPLACES 523#,

MAX PPL 4

MAX WEIGH CAP. 675#

Kits will be available later this year and start shipping in early 2027.

Spring Newsletter is out

Clint just got back from a great 3-days at Rocking the Boat where we built two Caravelle Rowers for the CIty Parks program. Thank you WoodenBoat School for making this happen and Rocking the Boat for being a host. It was a blast!

Our Spring 2025 Newsletter is out. Please subscribe to it with the link below, if you are not already on the list. Look for a confirmation emial - you may need to reply to opt in. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, too!

Introducing the Fearless Frosties!

Years ago we created a kit for the Cape Cod Frosty and built a few for SailMaine, one of the most active Frosty fleets around. Recently we did a redesign of our Frosty kit and are in a major effort to use these little boats as a tool for getting kids engaged in not only building Frosties but building options for them to continue engaging with our ocean economy as they grow and development. In the coming weeks, a middle school group in Wiscasset, Maine will build the first of what will become a new fleet of Frosties in Wiscasset Harbor.

The FROSTY is our newest kit, 100% stitch-and-glue. What!? Clint, you don’t like S&G! Well, I know, but it has a place. In the case of this little boat, to make it dead easy and quick to build it is worthwhile. In the photo here, you can see me building one over the course of the Cape Cod Boatbuilders Show last February.

More will be rleased soon about the FROSTY kits and when they are available, we’ll let the word out via the socials and our newsletter.

The reatil price for the full kit will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,500 (includes sail) and we should have them ready by Fall 2025.

How is building the Goat Island Skiff kit different from building with just plans?

The Goat Island Skiff kit builds differently than the boats built from just plans.

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A Calendar Islands Yawl 16 being built upside down over a building jig which comes precut in the kit. Believe it or not, the CIY was heavily inspired by the GIS and a guy who sailed the heck out of a GIS he built, Christophe atson.

Any modern wooden boat designed these days is drawn in the computer, modeled and rendered in such a way that enables the boats to made into a kit. What does that mean? It could be as simple as using the computer software to generate 2D geometry representing the molds of a boat so that they can be precut on a CNC router. In this case perhaps, the boat builder(s) sets up a strongback the traditional way, spaces out the molds on the "building jig” and planks the boat. Or the designer can go further and model the strongback and building jig itself such that those components of the jig are precut on a CNC machine. The interior of the boat can be patterned on the shop floor and all the transverse structural parts cut by hand from stock, or all that structure can not only be modeled in the computer and precut on the CNC but it is then set up as part of the strongback/building jig so that after planking when the boat is flipped, all the structure is included in the hull. Going further, hardware for the boat can be patterned and fabricated but a serious designer on the computer can model those pieces in their CAD program and export files that allow castings to be 3D printed or pieces of hardware laser cut and welded together.

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Mark Nye’s kit components all prepped. Ready to go 3D!

All of this is to say that my goal was to make a GIS kit that took full advantage of the methods available with computer aided design and CNC cutting.

The first GIS kit was a package of precut parts based on the same geometry that a plans builder cuts by hand. The geometry that Mik Storer drew and dimensioned in the plans was available as a file we call a DXF which is essentially the CAD’s world equivalent of a PDF. With those files imported into my software and cleaned up (there is always careful fairing and checking to do when a file is imported from another system), I could then program the parts to be cut on my CNC router. I did that for a couple years. One Goat named GIR is a well known product if this early kit offering.

Besides the time savings to the builder - indeed there was a lot of plywood cutting they did not have to do saving them time and cutting mistakes for sure - there wasn’t anything I can point to that made this first generation GIS kit truly special. During this time period I was experimenting with what I now call the Tab-n-Lock system. With that system proven out on a few other of my skiff kits as well as my NS Scarf, I decided to redesign the GIS kit to create what ships today.

The idea behind the Tab-n-Lock method is to create a way to mechanically interlock the transverse members of the boat - frame and bulkheads - with the side panels themselves. On the frames and bulkheads are precut tabs (about 1 1/4” x 1 1/2” in dimension) that stick into precision cut, matching slots in the side panels. When the side panels are bent around, the slots find their respective tab on each frame and bulkhead and they lock into place securely and without any slop. A small precut wedge holds the side panel in snugly. With this system, there are no bevels used on the frames and bulkheads, saving building time, and they are glued in situ meaning that they do not need to be removed to add glue. Kit builders frame the frame/bulkheads with several pieces of hardwood only on the top and bottom - because the bulkheads are filleted to the hull in lieu of framing and beveling along this joint.

In this photo you can see the tabs sticking through the side panels. These CNC cut features allow the shape to lock together quickly and easily.

For those who build by hand, remember how tricky it was to bring the side panels together and align them to the frames, dry fit them, then remove and glue? This is literally a “snap” with the kit.

The NS Scarf in a set of GIS planks

The other big difference between GIS kit and the normal build method is that there are precut scarfs on the side and bottom panels. This is another proprietary if not trademark of CSC kits, a feature we call the NC Scarf. It is an interlocking joint like you see in many other kits out there - the interlocking joint is crucial to the ability of the precut plank to align perfectly such that we get what traditionally we call the “sweep and spile” of the plank. But I never liked those ugly joints and I did not want my boats to come across as a :kit boat”. So, the interlocking geometry is hidden on the inside of the overlapping joint and all you see on the outside is a slight wavy pattern, which helps increase joint strength.

There are a few other bells and whistles included in the plywood kit. But we haven’t even mentioned the other aspects of the GIS kit: the solid wood is precut to dimension with scarfs for the builder to glue them to length (only hand tools are needed to build the kit); all the hardware has been figured out and included for the builder; the epoxy kit provides exactly what is needed for gluing, filleting, laminating and glasswork. There are resources I include in the manual and plans that only CSC customers have, such as plans for making the YAWL version as well as how-to instructions and I hope soon some videos.

I would be remiss not to mention a few other cool things we do for the GIS kit: we can precision mill the foils on our CNC router. The shape generated is more precise than even the most skilled hands can generate but if people want to make their own foils we have foil templates that we include. There are the parts and instructions for people who wish to make a yawl version. There are sawhorse cradles to build the boat on, oarmaking kits fit to the GIS, kits for making a birdsmouth mast. And best of all, builders can call me with questions.

Just as the name of this BLOG suggestions, nothing is perfect and we are always striving to improve all or kits. My only regret with the GIS is that I did not 3D model the boat, so there are some limits to what I can do. But it has become a heck of a kit offering that we are proud to ship and - like MIK does with his resources online - make this incredible design even easier and more accessible to build for people in the US and Canada. But people should remember this: you are building a boat. This is not a shelf from IKEA or a birdhouse from Boy Scout days. Even with the best kit ever, it is still a human-built, real wooden boat made from bent wood and shaped by hand with real tools. Now, I should go - I have a 12 year old GIS that finally needs a little TLC and the snow is melting!

Greg Underhill’s GIS was launched last year. A brand-new boat builder with a growing career and young kids, he did a great job!

Kudoes to Mark Nye for helping me document an early 2nd generation kit for the Goat Island Skiff. Great color!

Third method of kit construction

In the last two posts, I wrote about wood-chine and plywood-glued-lapstrake construction utilized in our kits. I spoke about how these traditional plywood methods, when kitted in a smarter way using CAD and precision machining by CNC, allows a beginner to experience these more “traditional” plywood construction methods in a way that brings joy and success to first time builders. Boats using these plywood construction methods - such as the Caravelle and Drake 17 photos below - have never been more accessible to people than they are now. with our kits.

Wood-chine construction - the chine log is the piece of wood bening along the inside of the join between bottom and side plank.

Lapstrake construction - this is a 3-plank per side Drake 17 with garboard, binder, and sheer. They overlap 3/4” on a bevelled joint and are glued with epoxy - no fiberglass!

The new way

A number of our boats also incorporate a form of stitch-and-glue construction we call it tack-n-tape construction, a form of stitch-and-glue in that the main structural join is formed by welding panels together with epoxy and fiberglass. In Tack-n-Tape, the panels are either bent over a form and fastened down to frames and bulkheads or the panels/planks are bent over a self-jigging set up using our Tab-n-Lock system to hold things together until the epoxy cures. Whatever the means of hold the panels close together, the eventual joint is made the same way: epoxy fills the gaps between the planks and short fillets are made between molds and any wires needs to hold plank edges together. In fact, another method used is small pieces of plywood hot-melt glued on the inside of the hull to hold plank edges together where needed, and then the panels are glassed together on the outside.

Here you can see the tabs from the frames sticking through the plank with wedges to hold. John is adding some wires to the bottom join to draw the ply edges together for the tack-and-tape seam.

Here you can see the top of the plank on a Points East Pram being bevelled to receive the lapstrake sheer plank.

The epoxy filler and fillet and fiberglass over it makes the structural integrity of the joint. This is in direct contrast to the wood-chine, ‘screw-and-glue’ method where the plywood geometrically glued to two sides of a chine log to create the structural integrity; the only glass needed on the outside to help seal and protect the plywood edge. In the case of glued-lap construction, the strength and stiffness of the joint comes from the epoxy gluing the two edges of plywood together along a bevel, effectively doubling the thickness of the hull at every lap - very strong and no glass needed!

Often where I like to use a tack-and-taped seam is on the bottom of the boats. When glassed and graphite coated, the bottom of the boat is like a teflon skillet than can take repeated beaching and is easily repairable. The upper planks would then be glue-lapstrake joined minimizing the amount of glasswork needed to do compared to the equivalent Stitch-and-glue boat. It also makes a cleaner, crisper looking hull - both aesthetically and hydro-dynamically. These boats also will incorporate aspects of the tab-n-lock method where appropriate and as such a truly hybrid systems. Many boats in our catalog use this hybrid system: the Calendar Islands, some of Vivier’s boats like the Morbic-12, and the Deer Isle Koster to name a few.

Hopefully, these posts give you a clearer picture of how we approach construction in our kits. Moreover, why our boat kits are emphatically not Stitch-and-glue kits and why we think that makes them better boats to build and use in the end.