Scarfing Angle on Jon Boat Skids/Keels

[zjebeling]

I'm building a jon boat, and I want to add 3 skids/keels that will only go part way up the curvature of the bow, with a scarf on the front edges of the skids (primarily for aesthetics). Does anybody have any advice or rules for an angle on the scarfing?

[Thorne]

I take it you mean to taper the forward ends of the pieces of wood to fit onto the hull at an angle? No general advice, as I think you'll just need to plane the wood until it fits the hull.

You may want to end the taper with a strongly-glued / fastened end as it sounds like the ends may come in contact with the ground/beach/banks, right?

[zjebeling]

I am not looking to carve out wood to fit the hull, as I intend to just bend a 1x2 around the bow. I want to scarf/taper the front of each skid down, so that it doesn't look like an abrupt end to a 1x2 piece of lumber. So instead I would have a scarfed/tapered piece of lumber that is 3/4" thick from the back, all the way up until a few inches from the front. At such a position it would taper down to something like 1/4". This area on the skids is likely, as you say, to come into contact with the ground, so I don't want to weaken the skids. I am using oak, so that 'should' help.

[Thorne]

You could also build up an angled bit of thickened epoxy to take that 1/4" down to meet the hull -- this might help resist the skid board ends splitting or peeling off the hull.

[zjebeling]

That's a good idea to build up the fronts of the skids with epoxy putty. I'll take that advice.

I decided after further thought, to just bring the skids up to the point of curvature, instead of part way up the bow. Although the skids will come into contact with shore line, and the occasional log (or trash), the primary reason for them is to track better in the water and prevent wind, current, and waves from sliding the boat all over the water surface. Since the flat surface is what will contact water upon planing out, that is all that really needs to have skids.