Upstanding boathook
I found this article many years ago in Wooden Boat Magazine. Bought it together with bronze boat hook hardware with aim to build a proper thing. So far I had aluminium, telescopic hook (on my previous boat, Safir Motoko) which I sold with the boat. Now, on Meritaten, I have standard, wooden boathook from mass chandlery. It’s fine but I lack few functions:
grip should be oval so that the hook is always held in the proper position for action
it’s too short - most often I needed extra 40 - 50 cm in length
it floats flat when dropped accidentally into water, impossible to grab from passing boat without jumping into water
opposite end needs to be wide and flat - to push on boats or obstacles
My new boathook should accommodate all my desires and should also match the boat. I had few attempts during the years.
Once I converted very long oar into boathook.
I took this idea from OffCenterHarbor video. It worked quite OK but was ugly and still floated flat.
Second approach was made from hickory, bought at chandlery as gardening tool’s handle.
That one was nice but it didn’t float at all - bronze hardware was too heavy so I added several cork spheres on the stick to keep it floating. It even floated as it should - like fishing float - but it was sticking out just a few centimetres. Probably 20 more cork balls would improve the situation but that was a dead-end anyhow. It was round and too short.
New boathook will be built from two types of wood, for aesthetics and strength/elasticity. As a core I chose walnut, surrounded by Oregon pine. All pieces were glued with thickened epoxy, colour matching core piece (WEST filleting blend gives mahogany-like colour).
Nails at both ends helped to keep all parts in relative stable position. Moderate clamping force to get a bit of squeeze-out. As always - you never have too many clamps!
Epoxy cured overnight so I cleaned the assembly from excess glue.
Square beam it became. I started with shaving service end to mount the bronze hook. According to drawings and my measurements I needed to go down onto small diameter, leaving the big one spaced 4 inches apart.
Adding few intermittent rings helped keeping the progress even on all sides.
I mostly used drawknife and spokeshave, block plane was of help to keep track of edges.
Once close to the final dimension I gradually sanded away the wood, marking high areas with hook itself.
I leave a small void at the end of the stick, to fill it with lead, if needed.
Assembled boathook in its raw form was taken for a swim. I wanted to get a feeling how much I need to shape it to get proper floating behaviour.
Obviously a lot needs to be removed - it floated dead flat.
I started shaping the handle and went to the lake every few hours to see if I’m getting closer to desired behaviour.
Many shavings later I came to the state that I didn’t want to remove any more material. After all, this hook needs to be strong so I cannot remove too much wood.
In principle I was removing most material from the far end, opposite to the hook. This is to lighten it: once the hook sinks I want as much of the handle to stick out as possible.
Closer to the hook I was keeping as much wood as possible - to have buoyancy big enough to float high. The whole thing here was to keep a delicate balance between centre of weight and centre of buoyancy. Once this balance is achieved we are at home.
Tests of the final-shaped handle with hook showed correct tendency but it still floated flat. Obviously, the boathook being much longer than standard required heavier bronze hardware. I taped 40 cm long brass bit to the service end and hook sinked directly, with enough of the handle sticking above water to call it a day.
But that was not enough - it was sinking like torpedoed ship, meaning there was too much weight added. We are after a graceful sinking, kind of like submerging WW2’s submarine. That should give us much more length left above the water.
By removing brass bit by bit I came to the stage where hook was sinking slowly, with grace. So we came to this sweet point!
Now it was just to shape the remaining brass into something more pleasing. Two brass screws, countersunk in the bit, will hold it connected to the handle.
Sanding and oiling followed.
I’ve chosen to use only Owatrol D2 here. The handle should be protected and smooth but must not be slippery. Varnished wood will not be as firm in grip as oiled. Time will tell if I made the proper choice but for now it looks fine.
End-grain was saturated properly using old socks filled with the oil.
Saturated wood was left to cure overnight.
Next day we took the hook to the harbour for final tests. Patrik and Helen on “Flicka” got interested so we jumped on board of their spectacular, ferro-cement Colin-Archer to show hook’s behaviour on deeper water.
New boathook behaves as desired!
I’m pleased with its form, it’s matching Meritaten and hopefully it will serve us long time. It was fun to build!