About five months into the build, questions of “drive train” started to come up.
Yeah, I found a motor and Uncle Tim has done an awesome job getting it ship-shape, BUT… there’s a big black hole of unknowns between the doohicky end of the motor and the “make it go” end of the boat. This is about the extent of my vocabulary at the time. I was basically in deep s*&t from a knowledge perspective.
There are a gazillion ways to connect a motor to a propeller: v-drives, sail-drives, straight shaft arrangements. And then the options on parts and pieces – bearings, bearing housings, stuffing boxes, do we have enough bearings? etc. When you are rebuilding a boat this stuff is all self-explanitory because you have a template. But when you’re building from scratch it’s all up to you, or to an expert, to figure it out.
Recognizing that I was totally out of my depth, I took the recommendation of many and booked a flight to Ft. Lauderdale to visit Frank & Jimmies Propeller.
Charlie, one of the guys at Frank and Jimmies, was exceedingly patient and helpful. He showed me stuffing glands, bearings, etc and explained their purposes, most of which I knew in theory but seeing and holding the parts allowed me to start to visualize what I needed for my build.
After three visits with Charlie, I had a pretty solid(ish) idea of what I needed going forward. Emails exchanged and Charlie started a file on my build with copies of the relevant design drawings. Later on, I compiled everything into a summary drawing: (still not the final design I went with)
