Building a Tolman

What follows is a narrative of my experience building a power boat called a Tolman, something like the sister ship above.  Mine will be the Jumbo model ~24′, based on a kit of Okoume marine plywood cut out by Neal Schlee of Anchorage, Ak.  To the best of my knowledge, the fastest build of a Jumbo is 90days.  The individual in question was working 5 to 7 days/week and mostly 12 hrs/day.  Quite a few guys take several years.  In my case, for many reasons I won’t bore you with, it’s going be closer to 7 – 8 years.  As I write this introduction, it’s already been 7 years.   Stay tuned as I’ll be adding pictures and notes as I work on it.  My hope is that you find this story interesting and that it may even motivate you to build your own.

Notes:

  1. In a few cases where I failed to capture pictures of a particular step, I have shamelessly plagiarized photos from other builder’s sites.  Several of the drawings have also been “borrowed”.  If you are one of those builders and want me to take them down, please don’t hesitate to message me (Larspa) on the Tolman site.
  2.  Most but not all photos can be enlarged by clicking them.  If there is a + at the cursor, clicking on that will enlarge it even further.  Use the back arrow to return to the text.
  3.  A menu for selecting chapters is on the left