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  Before I get into One Off building let me  mention a little about tools.My most used power tools for building the Strong back  are a Table Saw,Band Saw,cordless drill, 1/2" electric impact wrench or air impact. Also let's not forget the electric skill saw or what ever brand you prefer.As far as hand tools go, a good quality hammer,crowbar.framing square and try square. A leveling transit for leveling out the Strong back and setting your frames.Also an 8lb maul or how ever heavy you choose to knock things in place,like blocking under your Strong back.    OK, One-off Boat Building is the reverse of using a female mold as used in production built boats. It is a male mold in which a Strong back  is constructed where frames (pic in the upper left of this text)are mounted on it to begin the building of the mold.  My plans for the Roberts 53 came with a detailed print of the construction of the Strong back .The first thing is to build all your Strong back frames and assemble them taking care to mark the center on each one accurate,this is important!!!  If you look at the pics below you should notice the center line down the middle of the Strong back,it is important that it be dead on the center of the Strong back so the center line on each of those frames lines up with the string line. You should use the transit to find the highest point on the ground to put you first blocking point down.If you start in a low spot to block your gonna have a lot of dirt to dig out. If your not familiar with a transit here's a link "on how to"     http://www.ehow.com/how_4883855_use-transit-level.html         By keeping everything level and working off the center line you cannot go wrong.Once I got everything blocked I did not want it to move so I drove 2"X4"'s in the ground next to the bottom stringers of the strong back and bolted them together .Next up was building the boat frames.You can see some of these in the pic in the top left hand of this article. This was when I was able to see things start to take shape.I would recommend If you are at the point of committing to the project of building a boat,It would be wise to start reading in your spare time on some of the                                          
" construction methods  of boat building." Studying and thinking about how you want to proceed would be greatly beneficial  for some one who is about to undertake such a project.
 I have found some photo's of some one-off boats and will post them .  All those to the right were a few of the boats built at our yard.We had one fellow, Ron who completely rebuilt an old Stone Horse sailboat. He gutted the boat,turned the hull up side down and proceeded to cut a rabbit out about 5/8" between all the old planking and if I remember correctly he removed all the old fasteners and replaced them with new bronze one's before he had done the routing. He then fabricated some long splines and drove them in between the planking with West Epoxy and cotton fiber, leaving them proud and sanding them off.  He next board sanded and faired the hull and when completed ,He double planked the hull with cedar planking, then  faired that out, covered that with West Epoxy and glass cloth.  Besides the hull he rebuilt every thing, painted it a lite blue and it was so nice it needed to be put in a swimming pool so the dirty river water would not soil it, I kid you not! It had to be the best job I had ever seen on a rebuild job. I understand a few years later he sold that Stone Horse to William F Buckly. All I can say is Ron is a craftsmen.
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ROBERTS POWER BOAT LAUNCHING
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MR.WILL'S BOAT THE ' OX '
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LAUNCHING ROBERTS 29
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