Hi
I live in New Zealand and I am building a replica vintage hydro from the Alter Ego plans.
This is my 3rd boat building project and I have a website showing details and progress (actually just a good way to ensure I take photos as I go – which I didn’t do enough of on the first 2 projects) and thought that this site and stuff may be of interest to your website visitors. The link is www.bootlegger.co.nz
I would really love to find an original type rudder setup for the boat and maybe one of you may have one lying in the corner of their shed – well you never know. I do have a cast transom bracket and quadrant – Glenwood marine – and could have a rudder bracket and blade made but a genuine one would be the one to have. Please send me an email if you can help me out.
Regards,
Greg Roy
Editor’s Note: I highly recommend that you surf through Roy’s website (link above). He is a very talented builder (great air brush work as well). One other item I would like to point out — Neat that Roy is framing his latest boat build in Kauri. If you are not familiar with this wood, worth reading up on it.
I work at a wood shop and I’ve seen the “old-growth” Kauri wood. Not talking about wood that’s been around since just BC…we’re talking 50k+ years old trees that fell into the great peat swamps during prehistoric times in NZ. These prehistoric bogs are usually farm fields or ranch lands today. They dig them out and sell them. They are available in the US at a facility in Ashland, Wisconsin. (http://www.ancientwood.com/). Also – Google “Kauri” images on the wood species and you see some of the most impressive beautiful slabs (huge chunks) of wood ever.
Anyways Greg replied back with more info on the woods available in NZ:,
“Yes we still can get the odd bit of Kauri milled here. They exported all the best logs a couple of hundred years ago, dumped or left the stumps and those are now being pulled from the ground for all sorts of uses. The Kauri is protected as such but they allow some land owners a certain number to be cut each year. The other great native timber used in boat building in NZ is Kahikatea, and this is a bit more readily available and I will use this for the deck battens if needed. We also can get Fijian Kauri which is a nice wood”.