The Shed - Marine

The great Greek gear train

28 February 2025

Many years ago in a history of technology, I read a passing mention of a strange artefact, a piece of mechanical gearing, that was in the Athens National Archaeological Museum. I didn’t know then, but getting to see this would become an obsession in my life.
The artefact was recovered in 1900 from an ancient Greek galley. This ocean-floor wreck was accidentally discovered by sponge fishermen sheltering from a storm by the tiny island of Antikythera. One of the artefacts later taken from the ship was a corroded block of copper which, after it was cleaned, revealed the vestiges of a complex gear train. This has come to be known as the Antikythera Mechanism.

Waka building – Tradition goes hi-tech

4 February 2025

Architect, designer, sailor. Add lateral thinker, enthusiast and passionate Kiwi to the mix and you have the CV of a Christchurch man who has made it his mission to put Maori waka back on the water by marrying traditional knowledge with today’s technology.
Quentin Roake’s goal is to find a way to build waka in numbers, recreating the appearance and characteristics of traditional craft in a modern version that is portable, durable, and economical to manufacture.
“The big question is, how do you translate the traditional form of canoe into modern materials? You can’t cut down a big totara tree every time you want to make a canoe,” he says.
Quentin’s quest for a solution involved consultation with tohunga waka (canoe experts), including Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr and Sir Hekenukumaingaiwi (Hector) Busby, and led to Nga Waka Tangata kaupapa, a collaborative project to develop contemporary forms of waka.

Build your own tinnie

25 October 2024

The aluminium runabout – better known as the tinnie – is the quintessential Kiwi bach boat. Most arrive in the backyard direct from the showroom or Trade Me, but Auckland boat designer Jim Pauling has created a new way of getting a tinnie: building it by kitset.
He has several sizes in his range. This one is the baby, the DIYNO 361, at 3.6 metres long. Thanks to improved technology and lower prices for power tools generally, it is much easier for the home handyman to pick up a welder, have a few practice runs on some scrap aluminium, or do a course at night school, and build his own kitset, 12-foot tinnie.
Pauling is a diehard fan of aluminium as a building material. Thanks to CNC (computer numerically controlled) cutters, it can be accurately cut to shape for sale as a kitset, which saves labour and vastly improves the result.

Brad Wards Kontiki – built in Lockdown 2021

29 September 2021

https://the-shed.nz/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/20210905_113633_342706953652751.mp4

Build a sand trolley

3 June 2021

I used a pipe 3200mm long, but it depends on what you have. This is 2400mm along the flat and bent up at the front. The horizontal distance, from the flat to the tip lengthwise, is 340mm. I measured from a square on the pipe, and out 340mm for the bend. The axle is usually 1200mm. I turned a little insert stub axle for putting through the one-inch (25mm) bush in the centre of the wheel and into the axle. You could also turn down the axle to fit. It’s a straight bush because bearings and saltwater don’t mix.

Video of the Iona Boathouse Project as featured in Issues 91 and 92

27 April 2021

In two consecutive issues of The Shed, we followed the build of a tiny house on the banks of the Whanganui River.

Make your own Kontiki for fishing

27 November 2019

There are several New Zealand-designed and created fishing kontikis on the market but when I thought about having one, I wasn’t going to buy it.
I had the ability, so I did what any good Kiwi would do, I decided I would make one myself.

A home-made Kontiki built from scratch

27 February 2019

Over the years I’ve tried sails, kites, giant bags, kayaks and surfboards to get hooks out where the fish are. After watching torpedos on the beach, I find it is now obvious that there really is only one way and it requires 12 volts and a motor.
Of course every challenge is only really about what you can learn in the process, so I set about building a kontiki torpedo and winch from scratch for as little as I could. I had to enlarge my capabilities especially in aluminium casting, plastics forming and in electronics.

Build the best smoker

23 January 2019

Some time back I built the excellent pizza oven featured in this ﬁne magazine and it provided weeks of building pleasure. We have had many evenings of entertainment where we cook everything in it we can think of (in the learning stages, I use the term “cooking” very loosely).
It was almost a shame to ﬁnish it and I I have pined ever since for something like it. There are just so many pizza ovens you can ﬁt in a backyard. As keen try-hard ﬁsherman and someone who lives for spicy food, I wanted to get into smoking ﬁsh and salamis as well as cheese, sausages and hams, with taste and preserving the product being the main goals.

Make a simple outrigger canoe

22 November 2018

To build it, I concentrated on the advice of most waka ama advocates: that the canoe should be made of locally available materials, quick to assemble on the launching area and very cheap to make.
This waka cost me less than $200 by using recycled material and left-over house paint for the finish. I did not work from plans but used a cardboard model that I made as a guide. The waka takes less than two minutes to assemble after we take it off its trolley.

Marine