At the outside of the sides and an inch below the top edge a gunwale-strip is made fast, and with a ring in the bow for a painter and a pair of oars the sharpy is ready for use.
Of course it should be thoroughly painted. Three or four successive coats of paint should be applied to a boat the first time it is painted, and before using, it should be launched, half filled with water, and allowed to stand for a few days so that the joints will swell and close properly. A mast six or eight feet high and a leg-of-mutton sail will enable a boy to sail before the wind in a quiet breeze, but rough-weather sailing should not be attempted in this style of open boat.
A dory (Fig. 11), is somewhat similar to a sharpy but has higher sides and a narrower bottom, therefore it draws more water than a wide, flat-bottomed sharpy.
A boy can make a dory from twelve to sixteen feet long, but a fourteen-foot dory will be quite large enough to hold from four to six boys comfortably and safely. The sides should be twenty-four inches high and the bottom twenty-four inches across amidships.
The bottom is made from four six-inch planks battened across as shown in Fig. 12. The joints are leaded before the boards are brought together, and the fastenings are of galvanized nails clinched at the inside. The battens, of course, are on the inside, but the nail-heads are on the outside or bottom of the boat.
A stem and stern-piece (Fig. 13 A and B) are cut from hard-wood, and to these the wooden sides are made fast at both ends. The bow and stern of a dory have more of a rake than those of a sharpy as may be seen in Fig. 11. The top of the bow extends out beyond the bottom at least from fifteen to twenty inches, while the stern overhangs the keel about twelve inches. The sides flare out nine inches at both sides amidships, so that the total width of beam is forty-two inches for a dory fourteen feet long.
Planks sixteen feet long are necessary with which to make this dory, for when they are sprung out at the sides they take up on the length. They can be six inches wide, and are made fast to ribs along the inside of the boat and attached with galvanized boat nails.
In Fig. 14 an amidships section of the dory is shown and the position of the seat is located. Along the top of the sides, to cap them and the upper ends of the ribs, rails two inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick are made fast with boat nails. These rails should be of hard-wood, and they should be sprung into place and securely fastened.