Mississippi-Mud Forums

had some free time today so i decided to start building a new pirogue using some parts from my old one. i built the old one about 10 years ago or so and have fished and hunted out of it every years since i built it. but over the years the bottom has started getting soft and the plywood started delaminating. so a year or 2 ago i added another layer of 1/4" plywood on top of the floor to get through duck season. it held up for the following season too. but it is time for a rebuild. here you can see the condition of the bottom. so my plan was to reuse the end pieces since they have some complex shapes and angles and they are made of cypress. i got them out without too much damage so they will be going into the new one. i had also planned on reusing the ribs since they are also cypress. however one was broken and another split when i was removi ng them so i am building new ribs out of cedar. all i got done today was taking everything off of the old pirogue, cleaned up the end piece and made 2 new ribs. have to get another piece of cedar to finish the other one. i'm also going to make the rub rails on the new one out of ceadr as well. they should hold up alot better than pine which is what i used on the 1st one and the pine ones had already started to rot. and the ceadr ones will only cost about $5-10 more.
new rib
grinding away fiberglass to get to screws sucks

end of the old pirogue

oh and making half-lap joints for the ribs with only a circular saw severely sucks. if i had a table saw or radial arm saw i could have done those joints in 1/10 of the time.

COOL build thread! keep us updated!

Nice project. What color do you want? Military?
What rig's tyre there? The F150?

it will be camoflauge. the tire is on a jeep(not mine)

worked on this some more over the past few days. started out by picking up some plywood. i needed to join the plywood together to make them longer so i used scarf joints. a scarf joint is basically where you taper down both pieces to be glued together so that they overlap each other but stay the same thickness. a properly done scarf joint won't lose any strength. so i cut my side pieces and bottom and then scarfed the ends and glued them together.
here you can see the taper on the pieces.

then used some gorilla glue and glued the pieces together and clamped them up.

also scarfed together some 1x2 cedar pieces to be the rub rails. these won't go on until after the sides have been glassed but i went ahead and got them glued up and smoothed out since i had some time.

then i made some gussets for the ribs and glued and screwed them on.

after those dried and were sanded smooth i glued and screwed the sides to the end pieces. and now i stuck the ribs in place and clamped them in to check out the shape. this is pretty much where it stands right now.
should have it all glued up and the bottom on by the end of the weekend. then it will be time for fiberglass and paint.

im very interested in building one of these is it possible to put a flat transom on it for a trolling motor

sure you can build one with a flat back. when i built my first one i got a kit. it included 3 pre-cut ribs. all the angles were perfect just had to be glued up and the 2 end pieces. all of which are made of cypress. and some good instructions. the kit was about $50 but that was almost 10 years ago. the kit is definitely the easiest way to go. i bought the kit from http://unclejohns.com/boat/default.htm kit is $64.50 shipped now

thanks i think ill buy the plans and build one from scratch i think ill go with the john boat and build a small one for the pond and then depending on how that goes ill do a bigger one for the lakes and rivers thanks for the link

This is so cool; got me thinking about doing a kit with my son. I think he'd love it