Glen-L.com

Everyone,

I'd like to post some remarks with sketches of various aspects of the open skiff's helm station, sometimes called a 'dog house'; a dodger; a weather helm, a pilot house; and plenty of other names in different locations around the country.

I have no idea if there are more terms internationally (?), but the reason to post this here is that (some of) you may find after building an open boat that you want to add a little shelter around the wheel for all the obvious reasons. My purpose isn't to show one house, one helm or even any one design; instead I'd like to share with the Glen-L builders a method you can follow to design and build your own stand up helm for an open skiff.

First, a few remarks about this post and who's posting. I don't sell designs, Glen-L does that, I don't consult, and I'm not finding fault with anyone else's lines, or building methods. I don't build commercially any longer, and unless you do, you're probably not aware that I've made millions [I believe that is accurate] of mistakes to learn what not to do in countless different corners of my designs.

I'd like to help you think through those corners and hopefully avoid a few hundred thousand mistakes of the millions we all have the opportunity to make. I have some time once in a while to post about my long list of mistakes and I try to concentrate on the solutions.

I built in welded aluminum and my illustrations, and thinking, are for welded aluminum, but plywood stitch and glue methods would work here too, I'm not conversant there so I won't remark much about wood.

If you can learn something from my experience, 'good on ya'; if you are considering of this type of project (?) then hopefully you'll find something here to inspire your own solutions. All I'm offering is a look at my methods for those who may be curious- there is nothing for sale- but if you invest YOUR time doing the various drawing exercises you can apply this method to make a light wt, solid and [maybe] attractive addition to your boat.

If you'd like to argue with me, or improve my ideas, welcome to the discussion, we'll all learn more by listening to advocates of different methods of design and construction.

The first thing to discuss if you're going to draw your own 'dog house' is the reason these cabin structure often look "homely as h*ll" : sheer height compared to helm station profile. Put another way, the look of these little pilot houses is hard to balance with the rest of the design of an open boat/skiff/dory. [Next] There are several features that are commonly used in this type of weather helm and we need to look at them in geometric terms so you can draw them for your self. [As we go] Also I'll try to give an example or two of some methods of building parts of these structures to make the project more manageable and even help the non-welder to build one using someone else to do the welds.

In almost all small boats the most dramatic and eye catching line is the sheer, especially on smaller tugs and lobster boats where these is a very dramatic upward sweep in the forward 1/3 of the hull. This line is also the biggest problem as you're putting a tall 'square' outhouse right in the middle of it, and there aren't many complimentary curves available. Probably the main point here is the height of the wheelhouse.

It hardly makes sense to put a helm station cover in the open skiff that you can't stand up under? But when you do this, put a 6' plus cabin in the middle of the deck, it the main design obstacle to complimentary or harmonious appearance. So overall height is a major design question and one of the very first that must be set.

So if you're drawing on this project now, a good beginning is to show the sheer in profile, line in the deck level below the sheer and then measure up 6' to 6'-6" and put a pair of lines parallel to the deck. This is the beginning of your stand up helm.

I'll give a shot at attaching some images too.

cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

I'm all ears, keep going.

_________________
God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers

Here is a work skiff designed by Response Marine with a very simple and VERY tall weather helm.

Another view of the same type of house.


here is a larger skiff with a proportionally larger cabin structure.

I'll have to post again to add more images, but these are super simple examples of the types of structures we'll try to explore.

I'd like to mention some features shown in these images- they have no after bulkhead, the sides are nearly plumb, the glass is mounted directly to the aluminum using a rubber extrusion, and the top of the structure is more or less even with these particular cabin sides and fronts.

cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

Here are a pair of pictures of a glass version of the pilot house.

This one has aft leaning glass and is mainly a cube with the windscreen on top.



This skiff's house is larger and has some brow or top overhang above the glass, but this illustrates the stark effect of proportion on the outboard view of these examples. They do look somewhat tall and it is very hard to proportion this cabin structure cleanly with the sheer, unless the topsides are deeper than 3' where the lower half of the entire structure is not seen.

Cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

Thanks for your informative posts. There are numerous times that alterations and additions to open runabouts add to the time on the water that we can use boats. I call these additions creature comforts. They also serve a big use to protect us from the elements and gear that we add such as fishing equipment. In general I really enjoy these types of conversation as these topics are critical and creative thinking for sure.


This targeted site sells plans that are sold and hopefully have been engineered to give the average boater a margin of safety and confidence, some that have no way to contain structures placed on the decks. Place some of the add ons in a washing machine and sometimes they can create a safety issue too.


These add ons change the center of gravity to much higher up. Under 20 foot boats especially which were intended to be open boats normally do not have the beam and structural integrity too already engineered to hold these structures and can be unsafe if these tops are not properly engineered to the very minimum of weight versus strength. Amateurs don't always do a very good job in this area.

. Amateurs as boat engineers is a scary thing sometimes.. So its not as much as someone selling items as much as care and caution must be used. Changing known plans is more than not a disaster, also giving the plans a bad name at no fault of the original designer. Many here have a learned sense of being a skeptic of the general consumer which also in these days comes with someone needing to place warning labels on every thing such as this post.

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Oyster, kens,

I agree that small dog house helms can be too heavy and that will cause stability problems, and the very glass that is used in some doghouses is the largest wt in some dodgers- and its almost as high above the waterline as it can be.

But what I'll propose is by repetitively using several simply formed shapes I hope to explain a technique which allows aluminum sheet to be used to build uncountable variations of the weather helm or free standing cabin for skiffs. When you’ve explored this method and sketched on your own I’m confident you’ll be able to use this method to design and build a cabin for your own small boat. Improving the elements of the design with your own innovations will improve this method but this will get you started.

The pieces begin with a “pizza pan panel”. That term is used because the basic panel is a flat sheet of 1/8” or 0.100”, [or 0.080" if you can weld it] 5086 or 5052 bent along its long edges with a press brake or sheet fold. Note that the correct bend radius for 5086 H32 is 4T = R that shouldn’t be confused with diameter. [It’s a one half inch radius for 1/8” sheet and not every shop has a nose bar that large so they may need to do the bends by 1/3rds or 1/4ers.] If the material is 5052 you can press it to much tighter radius without stress cracks in the long fold but the material may not offer the same strength of 5086 in the scantlings I suggest here. [If 5052 is used then a few precautions should be added, mainly another fraction of an inch in some of the dimensions.]

By using thinner metal without any internal added structure, to speak of, these little wheel houses can be very light. By using acrylic or polycarbonate for the window panes you can further reduce wt up high in the boat. So, by designing with light material put together in a way to reduce or eliminate framing, you'd keep the wt as low as sheet goods can for this structure.



Here is an example of the 'pans' that make up the structure of the sides and front of the cabin. The 'legs' or sides bent at 2" can be shortened as short as the brake equipment with handle, as long as there is a full 90 left on the panel. The stiffness of these panels comes when their top and bottom ends are joined an the edges are joined to the adjoining panels.



here is an example of a set of panels to form the base of the walk around cabin/stand up helm/dog house. This would be made of a series of these folded panels [pizza pans] each one butted or edge to edge with the adjoining panel's bent/formed/pressed leg.



one variation is to rake the forward panels aft, all that is needed is to bend the forward most side panels to an angle so they accommodate the rake.

If these panels were of 0.080" aluminum- a 2' x 3' panel would weigh about a five or six lb. So then entire lower skirt of the size shown would only be 50-60lb and, except for glass and the roof, the upper window band would weigh a similar amount in its metal sides. So if we doubled this numbers to give an aluminum wt estimate for the sides- we're only at 100-120 lb. , lets add another 50-100 lb. and call the entire cabin 200-250lb. - about the wt. of another crew member standing in the boat. [Well, a heavy displacement crew member like me that is....]

Now this is a 4' x 6' cabin so a small single person dodger can be quite a bit lighter.

I know that some of the dog houses we've built weighted less than 100 lb finished, so while that is a fixed wt above the waterline the vertical center [centroid] of gravity, for these structures, is about 3'-4' above the deck and if the material is chosen carefully, these structures need not make the boat un-seaworthy.

With all that said, if someone reading this decided to make the cabin structure of 3/16" plate and use safety glass windows for their 15' super light planing skiff and they were 6'4" tall - and they needed to add the radio antenna rack to the top of their stand up helm- they could be in trouble as soon as they launched.

A note on the sketches, I use objects of odd coloring to make the illustration more clear. Too may lines in a small area even with color can make the objects confusing. The colors are used to aid in separating the parts, they aren't my suggestions for a paint job!

cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

I focused on the wt aspect of these cabins and got a bit of the step by step track so I'll try to go back a few steps and add some info that I think fits at the beginning of the discussion.

Back to the design ideas.

Almost any boat less than 24’ or 25’ LOA has topsides so low that most free standing walk-around cabins look too tall in those skiffs. A stand-up helm requires 6’ 2” to 6’4” of head room depending on the crew and their boots. That may sound odd but many hip boots and even Extra Toughs add nearly and 1” to your height so allowing for taller people AND an inch or so to spare gets fairly high off the deck.

Almost any small boat that has a stand-up helm also has a deck intersecting the topsides above the chine. If the cabin begins on deck which is almost always above the waterline and rises more than 6’ even skiffs with 3’ topsides look too low at the sheer. The result, in my opinion, is a cabin that ruins the looks of many an otherwise attractive small boat.

In the past, designers weren’t willing to draw boats they felt looked out of proportional or unattractive from the profile view of the hull. They’d even reduce the cabin so low you’d have to sit down inside. Perhaps more attractive and often proportionally better looking; I’m concentrating on ways of making the stand-up cabin look more aesthetically appealing not arguing the merits of a decision to have one of these style houses on you boat.

[Side Bar: One of the prettiest skiffs I’ve seen and admired for many years from a distance had a walk around cabin with forward inclined windscreens and almost perfect proportion of sheer line, cabin and cabin brow. I’d always wondered how all these elements were so finely blended into a skiff that I knew couldn’t have been 20 LOA? It wasn’t until I saw her close by that I realized the designer, owner and builder all knew exactly what we’re discussing; this cabin was only shirt pocket high off the deck! You had to duck under the roof and sit at the helm to stay in the cabin. A year or so later I saw the skipper standing at the helm, outside (!), aft the cabin bulkhead looking over that cabin, that’s how some owners solve the problem of proportion. Still one of the finest looking welded aluminum skiffs in the Cook Inlet; she points out that not everyone NEEDS a full standing height cabin. One of the elements of this particular skiff's beauty is her fine proportions and a full ht helm would spoil that.]

If you are short, like me, you might choose to build your own boat’s cabin 5’10” as I have many times. On the other hand, taller friends don’t appreciate my selfishness when they travel with us.

The easiest way I’ve found to make the dog-house style cabin look good is by breaking the house lines at the window band/console height- about waist high. This is usually above the topsides sheer line but the break helps to reduce the overall appearance of height compared to the sheer. All of the suggested designs here will incorporate this design element to visually “shorten” the overall height and to break up the construction into more easily handled parts.

Another design element that helps is the line at the top of the cabin line and the brow or visor. Last the size of the glass panels compared to the size of the cabin sides can help to visually reduce the apparent size of the upper cabin window band and that too can help dramatically to improve looks.

Many stand-up houses feature “crabber style” (east coaster’s sometimes call this a “western cabin”) windows that lean forward instead of being plumb or leaning aft. Aft leaning windscreens in small cabins take up ‘all’ the floor area and force the helm aft while the forward leaning styles allow you to stand much closer to the front of the cabin and therefore makes possible a smaller cabin fore and aft.

Plumb or vertical windscreens are usually associated with traditional designs like tugs, work boats, push boats on older commercial fishing boats. This method of building could be used to build in that style but the examples shown in the sketches will focus on the forward inclined glass typical of the Northwest’s skiffs and work boats.



This Titan Tug image shows the traditional plumb windscreen but a fine looking brow with some curve to the side of the cabin top. This curve goes a long way to making the cabin 'sweet' to the eye. There is also a curve to the cabin break between the upper and lower parts of the main cabin. Both these curves are extra work, but are priceless in contribution to the final boat's lines.

Notice the narrow window posts? The camber to the cabin top and the line of the side turning into the brow or visor over the windows, are extra work but they sure look good to me.



Here is another little tug from the Glen-L catalog, here a smaller boat with less sheer had a PROPORTIONALLY taller house with more straight lines and less harmonious final appearance.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs, or being too picky (?), but this is an opinion piece so I'm including my reasoning for the steps ahead. I will provide the geometry and rough work methods for each of these shape lay outs and cuts, so you can adapt to your boats' sheer and overall look.

cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

Kevin,
This is good stuff. Thanks. I want a pilothouse for my boat and I need all this info I can gather. My house would be aft, making the aft end of the motorbox.
So far, in my mind, my boat would look like a Noyo Trawler that gets up and planes.
but, I want to 'sweeten' the lines.

_________________
God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers

In order to get us all on the same page with regard to the terms I'll use; here is an image blowing up a sample helm station to show generally what I call the parts.



The curve of the top of the house I call camber while the arc of the base's forward apron or dodger I just call (amount of) curve. I've heard the brow called a visor since it resembles a baseball cap visor, and the forward panel may be the windscreen, and the median panel I call a 'transition panel' might be called the median and it most often serves as the basis or parts of the dash or helm and instrument mounting element.

Another note to anyone trying to make sense of this series of posts (kens?) I hope we can all see that I'm expressing a method and using examples- these aren't plans- to give you and idea how to do this for your boat.

Glen-L has a series of plans for cabin structures and you could get those plans and simply draw in the metal panels shown here, layout cut and build to the Glen-L dimensions.

I've shown the base built with flat side panels and a curved lower forward panel and this will be explored - it is extremely simple to layout cut and tack up- welding won't be discussed until the end of the design discussion.

the software used is SketchUP (by Google) and I've set the circle segments to 'large and few' so the speed of drawing is fastest and the resolution of the curves is the least curved and most faceted or angled in the resulting images. I hope you'll be able to 'see' the ideas where there are curves even if I'd drawn with less smooth curved lines in may images?

What we'll do next is to look at this from the ground up, some of you will already see everything I'm going to say from this exploded view.

One last note here, welding thin metal is a pain in the stern even for the experienced aluminum welder, there's nothing as relaxing as running 0.045" wire on 0.25" plate! But trying to do a nice job of 0.080" with 0.030" or 0.025" (if you're lucky enough to have a gun that will run that small a wire) is actually more 'work' than the heavier weld.

So the panels are only welded on the edges. Please; read that again. The folded panels and almost every other piece in this design are only welded on the edges. This means you have two pieces of 0.080", for example, side by side and you only run a seal weld down their common edge, inside the cabin, and this is why the entire structure can be built without distortion or wrinkles and still be fully welded.

The weld heat and distortion contraction don't 'reach' around the brake corners on the sheets. This is the 'secret' or main factor allowing you to MIG weld this thin material and remain smooth and fair.

If you're following along and I've said something that doesn't make sense (?) please post a pointer to what I might restate or improve in the illustrations to make this method more clear to you.

The only poor question is the one that remains un-asked; if you can do it wrong- I most likely already have done it that way- so I'm happy to try to help you avoid the errors I know about.

cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

Kevin posted:
"Another note to anyone trying to make sense of this series of posts (kens?) I hope we can all see that I'm expressing a method and using examples- these aren't plans- to give you and idea how to do this for your boat.

Glen-L has a series of plans for cabin structures and you could get those plans and simply draw in the metal panels shown here, layout cut and build to the Glen-L dimensions."

I purchased the Dory Cabin plans and tried to apply the version E plans to my boat. I think it ends up looking like a trawler. Dont get me wrong, I like trawlers too, but the trawler look is not my intent here.
It is said that 'form follows function' and as such, then I need to get the proportions correct to have forward raked glass on my pilothouse. The function, for me, is to have all electronics up in the cabin top, smallest helm, and greatest room outside on the cockpit soles.

_________________
God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers

While I am working on something to offer, many curvy Euro design thats on many modern boats will not be so cute for your hull in my humble opinion. It just does not warrant such a design and would look more out of place. Of course we all see things a bit different, which makes it sometimes difficult to suggest stuff that accents another person' project. Your choices are limited. May I suggest something in the time being. Buy you some 1/4' luan and begin to mockup the overall deminisions, sizes and shapes and experiment with some side window shapes too. Also another suggestion would be to keep the actual top level even though your deck may be a sloping angle.

This also gives you an elusion that its shorter than what it appears. The foward most inside does not actually have to be standing room even with an electronics box. If you use the same plane as your decking, your look will look like its falling back as I call it. Even a drop of about two inches in the short span of what I think you may need is not that noticable inside.

kens,

If you're concerned with your boat's final looks all I can encourage you to do is draw, draw, draw. This might take the form of pencil and paper OR put up a set of the plans on the screen and use CAD software to model the ideas to scale.

Lets talk about just the line of the windscreen? Put the lines of the top of the cabin above the sheer with a dotted line below the sheer for the deck line and make a dozen copies of the sheer and stem waterline and top of cabin. Now, put plumb glass on #1 and add a few degrees to each of the next several versions until you get raked out there a 'mile'.

Now tape them all on the wall and get back at the far end of the longest room and look at them all. One techique I use to get my 'net impression' is turn back quickly and look and observe which of the group is the most appealing. Do that a few times and it will become apparent, in a half dozen turns, that its between number one and two or five and six....

Now take all the others down and put in some trial lines for the rest of the structure. This is the most appealing rake to your eye and you can begin to add other lines to see what other lines you like accompanying your leaned forward windscreen.

I'm not sure there are any limits to the number of possible combinations so you just have to try and see what it looks like?

cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

I guess what I am trying to do is take a phonebooth, and make it look like it aint a phonebooth anymore.
Doggone it there must be a way.

_________________
God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers

kens,

I hope this exercise will help to look for some design elements to perk up the phone booth and give a jaunty look to match your boat's.

Oyster's idea of mocking up is good practice but I'd draw for a while so you have something to guide you when you start cutting the ply for the mock up.

I'll look at the online catalog and see what examples I can come up with for the boat? At least we can talk apples to apples?

cheers,

_________________
Kevin Morin

What if I simply give up on the forward rake?

What about some of these?

http://www.pacificpilothouse.com/finder ... p?view=all

_________________
God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers