Welcome Amateur Boat Builder!

messing-about is a web community devoted to amateur boat building, on line continuously since 2002!

Friendly Amateur Boat Building Forums

The heart of our community is our Forums, a friendly place where you can ask questions (even if they have been asked before) and get a real answer from real people. Our Forums are the hub of our interactive offerings. We employ the latest commercial forum software from IP.Board, with advanced spam protection and security features. We offer other features to help your on your journey. We have a chat room and event calendar for our members to use.

We Can Host Your Forum – Free!

Do you have a sailing club, boat building association, or small company related to boat building and need a forum? We can host your forum for you on messing-about, absolutely free. Clubs can even have member’s only, private forums. We do this to increase the offerings for our regular members, and increase our readership. We are picky about who we host, and you have to have someone ‘watch’ the forums for abuse. Email Frank if you need more information!

Our Boatbuilding News Feed

Our News Feed features links to the latest posts from boat building blogs across the ‘net. We update this feed hourly. Want your blog included? Email Frank!.

• Galley Cabinets Are In!

  Read Original Story at: From a Bare Hull: Building A Westsail 42, Hull #60 Well, the carcases at least. This is one of those projects that has been "sitting in the corner and ignored" for a while now. The modular frames for the drawers and behind coun...

• Catching up on readings past – Tim Severin’s “The Sinbad Voyage”

  Read Original Story at: Chine bLog I have had some time to sift through the back catalog here at Chine bLog headquarters and noted that I never covered a few key books I read in the last couple years. In particular, after knocking off Tim Severin̵...

• Bottom Draw & Hatch Covers

  Read Original Story at: Widebeam Boat Build Blog Remember the days when mostly girls started a bottom draw for the day they would marry and set up their new home.Well building a new boat is much like setting up a new home... Read more at: Widebeam Bo...

• Hot Springs Village Archaeological Site

  Read Original Story at: Skinboat Journal Since we just got done looking at traditional Unangan beliefs I thought I would mention a website that features amulets from The Hot Springs Village archaeological site... Read more at: Skinboat Journal

• Site Closed

  Read Original Story at: Wooden Boat Builder Hey Guys and Gals,Sorry to inform you all..Due to financial conflicts, I closed my website Boyle's Boats at http://www.boylesboats... Read more at: Wooden Boat Builder

• Sanding 1/2 done...

  Read Original Story at: Wooden Boat Blog I finished sanding the epoxy and cloth on one side of the boat and have one more side to do. This is tedious work and it seems to take forever to finish. The now smooth layer of epoxy and fiberglass cloth will ...

• Aaaaannnnd while we’re at it, Tim Severin’s “The Jason Voyage”

  Read Original Story at: Chine bLog I also read, in recent times, Tim Severin‘s “The Jason Voyage”, his attempt at following the mythical story of Jason and the Argonauts. He had a Bronze Age Aegean galley built using archeological ev...

• Making the sails, part I

  Read Original Story at: Building a boat and other follies Sailmaking (and mending) is traditionally a winter activity, and so it is for me.  The only carpentry-related thing I did since the new year was to laminate together two layers of 1X2 lumb...

• Manual is now in print

  Read Original Story at: Kudzu Craft Been working on this for a few weeks. Our assembly manual is now in a printed and bound book. No more CD’s! I much prefer anything technical to be on paper than the in digital format. After publishing my book ...

• Makin’ Waves

  Read Original Story at: Kudzu Craft Something new is in the shop. With Shad finished I have decided it is time to tackle what i suspect will be a big project. Who am I kidding? This is a really big project!  I am about to start the restoration of Mak...

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