Building a Bow Shed

After hemming and hawing, roughly pricing out various options, and thoroughly dreading the alternatives of either crawling around under a cover sanding, or spending years working on the thing I decided I had to build a shed.

Eventually anyone around boats, or Maine, comes across the Stinson Bow Shed. With plans allegedly available by mail order for $20 and some patience. I lacked patience, but the bow shed was for me. Simple to build, easy to get the required width at the height to clear the gunnels, coverable with shrink wrap. I set to work with plans I’d draw like all good projects, from pictures and internet commentary. Perhaps someone will build one off of these.

There are only two or three critical ratios for the arch, but I’ll leave them out here. Most people are probably best buying the plans, otherwise the details are available elsewhere. The pictures speak to the process. It took me about a month to build the thing. It measures 16x34, as wide as I could find lumber for (the bows are as long as the width), and long enough for the mast to fit inside.  I built it right over the boat where it sat.

making the bows on a jig, twenty in all

knee walls to gain some extra clearance

First few bows up

Nadia helped with the first two sets, I did the rest alone.

Plastic On

you can see some of the bracing. I later lightly shrunk the plastic.

arches up and covered

image shows clearances between shed and boat. note boat is not level, but shed is. mostly.

Finished bow shed looking south

Note mast stored along west wall, and plastic covering the ground

north end wall

note the nice room to work in front of the boat, even though the shed is only seven feet longer than the boat

One note of caution for prospective builders, while the lumber and hardware for the tunnel only cost a temptingly cheap ~$700, the knee walls, end walls, and finishing touches (which did include 300’ of 10ga wire) easily tripled that sum. The actual white shrink wrap was a remnant of 36’ wide from work, and luckily just long enough to make it the 32’ up and over the bows.

Once the knee walls and bows were constructed it took me a weekend working alone to raise them and cover it. Another week of evenings and a weekend for the end walls. I’ll have to take the north end off to get the boat out, but didn’t want to bother with doors at this point. I also hung lights and roughed in some outlets to cut down on the extension cord mess. Details are best left to the imagination.

So far, I’m quite impressed with the shed and can recommend the design wholeheartedly. While it doesn’t warm up much with the sun barely clearing the trees right now, hopefully that will change as we move into spring. I also put plastic down on the ground to limit condensation and control environmental contamination.