Not much to say here. Lots a of sanding and aligning. I'm using my number one son as a model to show the approximate seating position. I did modify the plans a bit to reinforce the mast base area. They originally called for several separate blocks of wood in the bottom, one small piece under the mast, another next to the mast to hold a pulley block. I combined them both into one solid piece that spans the width of the hull.

It's really starting to look like something. At this point, everything is held together with wood screws while I finish the trial fitting.

The assembly begins with bulding up the runner bases on the side panels. These are triple layered three quarter inch plywoood on the rear. They were extremely difficult to line up. As soon as I would start to clamp, they would slide up to a quarter of an inch. In retrospect, I should have made a temporary jig to hold everything in place.

And, we finish up with joining the two main side pieces.

Okay, so I think I'm learning how to work with wood. Measure once, cut way outside the lines, and then sand it all down to fit. I think it would be easier if the plans had more than just the occasional measurement on the templates. To make things even more fun, the hull not only tapers from the middle to the front and back, it has a definite "V" shape from bottom to top. This combined with the guesswork on the templates is making it a bit of challenge to get everything to fit right. Here are some progress shots.

I have decided to use only two storage compartments, one on each side of the seat side panels.  In the attached photos you can see that the access ports were cut in the middle of each side panel. The remaining compartments under the seats will consist of flotation. I decided to make the access to the storage on the seat side panels to reduce the amount of water that may enter the compartment from splash. 

Preparing to build the ice flyer took a few days. First, I had to download the plans. The designer released the plans to the public years ago, however, his website has been offline for quite a while. It turns out that some of the ice boat forums maintain copies of the plans, and they are also still available online via the Internet Archive.

 Once the plans were printed out, I was able to take a close look. The plans are not in a step by step format. Once you read through them a few times to get a good understanding of how the boat goes together, they are reasonably complete.

 The first item on the agenda was to print out the templates included in the plans. This was entertaining, as each template is divided into multiple six inch sections. You have to print out all the pages, then break out the scissors and start literally cutting and pasting everything together. And, to make things even more interesting, all the dimensions were slightly off when the templates came out of my printer.

 The second item on the agenda was to pick my materials. The designer recommends Sitka spruce. It turns out that Sitka spruce is like gold, rare and expensive. In the end, I decided to substitute a good quality 11 ply zero defect Birch plywood for the fuselage. Now that I've purchased it, it seems fairly strong, though I'm not impressed with how the plys completely separate under catastrophic failure. Guess I'll have to overbuild.

 For glue, after a fair amount of research I settled on Titebond II. It's well established, has a decent working time, is stronger than the wood it bonds to, and is waterproof as long as it isn't used underwater for extended periods.

Here's a picture of my first completed template, ready to trace out and cut. This is the one of two side boards, and it is approximately eight feet long.

Hello! I'm building an Ice Flyer, a simple wooden ice boat. This is my first foray into serious wood and glue, so it's going to be a heavy duty learning xperience on my part.

I choose the Ice Flyer because it met several of my criteria:

• Suitable design for a beginner.
• Proven design. The Ice Flyer design was refined by the designer over a decade or so.
• Cheap. (The plans are free)
• Versatile. You can put wheels on it. I wonder how it would do with hydrofoils? :-)
• I liked the look of the finished product.

In this blog entry I have included photos of the support cleats for the seat tops and sides.  For the cleats I used some scrap treated fence boards that a neighbor gave me after recently having a fence installed.  These cleats measure 5/8" thick and approximately 3" long and 2.25" wide.  I recall the plans actually recommending 3/4" thickness, but I had this scrap wood on hand and it was already treated.  I compensated for the thickness by installing a few extra pieces and increasing the width of each, which allows more surface area to be epoxied.

In the attached photos you will see where I have begun the installation of the seat supports.  This has been quite time consuming because a lot of trial and error fitting & trimming was done to get the seat tops to match the contour of the sides of the boat.  Rememebr---I had to add about 3" to the width @ panel "B" in order to get an acceptable hull shape.

I began to work on the keel today.  I laid out the batten along the keel slot and marked the position of each frame.  I then transferred the frame locations to the keel board.  I marked the width of the keel at each frame and laid a batten along these marks to make a curve for the keel shape.