Aluminium fishing boats or "tinnies" have been the mainstay of Australian recreational fishing for many years.  Over the years the boats have grown larger, fancier and heavier , requiring more and more horsepower to push them along.  Whilst some people are quite adept at welding aluminium and making, modifying and repairing their own tinnie, the average punter has to pay a qualified welder for all these services.

The cost of a decent, well made tinnie (few and far between these days) has to many people, become a barrier to having a new boat.  Normally the “package” price still requires many thousands of dollars in extra bits and pieces and dealer charges.  A number of the popular manufacturers are selling their 14’ hulls for anywhere between $8-11,000.

The design of many of these boats also is left wanting.  I have heard of special hull shapes slamming, welds cracking first time out and paint falling off when the boat is washed which is all very disappointing when a bunch of your hard earned has been spent on a “quality” product.

I am not saying that there aren’t high quality tinnies out there but they are generally from smaller custom builders whose prices for a 14’ are beyond the reach of most folk.

As Australians, we love building wooden boats.  Wooden runabouts were very popular before aluminium came on the scene but were dumped as people wanted the new shiny so called “maintenance free” boats.  With the advent of high quality marine plywood, modern fiberglass cloths and epoxy resins, timber runabouts or let’s call them Timber Tinnies™ have become a perfect low cost DIY alternative to the aluminium crowd.  Build them yourself, customize them and repair them yourself with minimal skill and tools required.

My company, Denman Marine has partnered with Queensland Naval Architect Mark Bowdidge of Bowdidge Marine Designs (BMD) to bring out a range of fishing/power boats in kit form for home builders. 

Denman Marine will be CNC cutting kits for Mark’s designs and the first design that we have developed for kit production is Mark’s well known Mushulu 14 (pictured) with his other designs to be developed over the coming months. We have also asked Mark to design a larger 16’ dedicated sports fishing boat similar to those models popular in the Top End which will be in kit form also.

Have a look here at the video of Mark's personal Mushulu 14.

As a professional boat builder, I have always been very skeptical about claims of kit boat producers but I must admit, I was absolutely amazed at how quickly the M14 went together and how fair the hull was.  

Construction is stitch and glue utilising high quality epoxy resins (we use and recommend WEST System) and Mark has designed a CNC cut building jig that took no more than 5 minutes to set up.   The jig has male molds to help form the shape when stitching up and a set of female molds to hold the boat level when working on the interior.  

The total time to separate all the components from the sheets, join the hull/bottom panels (no scarfing required) set up the building jig, laminate transom and stitch the boat together ready for filleting and glassing was just over 6 hours.

The internal fit out was just as quick and easy to assemble and we have gone to great lengths to make it easy to put the boat together.  There are location marks for everything from centerlines to seat to heights so you can virtually throw the tape measure away and the margin for any error has been eliminated.