I have been thinking about the kit boat that has recently come out and am looking at a new project. Any ideas how much it would be to get a builder to put the boat together without painting and varnish but a ready to go hull?

Keith designed it for home building but I'm sure if you took it to one of the lesser know builders or even Brett Dingwall say, they would put it together.
Why not give Keith a call , he might have some ideas. It does seem to go quite well when sailed properly.

I seem to recall someone, was it Keith Callaghan, saying 100 hours? If so 100hrs @ £50.00 = £5,000.00 seems fair IF it is 100 hours. That's about the time the pro's took in days gone by for wooden boats, but they were skilled, trained and doing it every day.

£5000?? hang on this is a cnc cut kit, how much epoxy are you using? I know a bloke who built a lysander 19, he scaled the plans up from a Lysander 17, cut every single bit himself £5000 are you having a laugh!!!
I fully accept that an established builder might want that much but if your a club sailor £5000 should be the finished boat with sails and trailer!!

5K including sails and trailer? I'll take two!

The wood alone will cost you 800 ... or 1000 precut for the kit ... 

mast and boom and poles? 2K5 in carbon ... sails 1500 ... thats 5000 already

fittings? 800 quid ... paints/ glues/ etc ... 300 quid ...  that 6K1 ...

labour .. 100 hours at what 50 an hour? .. 30 an hour? .. .wahtever ... 10K boat already ...

so at your mythical 5K ... I'll take two please!!

And .. just to follow up ... yes, I am building one ... I got sort of distracted by having to build a boat shed first, but that is now 90% done (20 foot by 20 foot) just insulating the walls with rockwool ready for a nice winters building :)

Good on you Robin,
Please keep us all informed as the build progresses

Robin, if you could post some pictures as you go that would be really great. I would love to see how you get on as I am sure a number of people would. You never know, maybe I might try one?

Interested..why not give Laurie Smart a call and ask him how much it would cost. He keeps records of all his time on builds and refurbs so i'm sure he could give an idea of time/cost putting Rob Holroyd's boat 3708 together.

My £5000 was for labour from a skilled professional, no matter how you cut the sums accountancy wise, you cannot expect a professionally built Merlin for much less or not a lot more than a Winder One Design. You could of course send the kit to somewhere where labour is cheaper, China, India, Malaysia, Argentina, Croatia, all have expanding boat building industries! 
Unless you do it yourself, and thanks to the modern approach to schooling, (No wood or metal work.) those manual dexterity skils are not as common as they once were.

It matters not really if you're building from scratch or rebuilding: hours are hours and if you have to pay a commercial rate for them then the cost of the job will spiral. Having rebuilt a couple of Contenders over the last 18 months (back to bare wood, one of them redecked) the material costs were the least of my problems. Had I been paying for the hours that went in to the boat, then the job would just never have happened, for the £400 that went on ply, epoxy and 'consumables' would have been quicly surpassed by a labour cost that would have been more than £1500.

Now I'm looking at doing a similar job on my Smokers, MR 3025 and  the numbers are scary. I'm hoping that the materials will be less as I'm not planning on redecking but the labour costs (due to the clinker construction) will be higher. Once the job starts I'll be documenting it but.... unless you had very deep pockets, doing this as a commercial venture would be a non starter.

D

Yep, 5K labour sounds about right for a professional build .. i could see it being more though as the skills needed to do the job are getting much rarer.

There was a time when you could find skilled craftsmen, who could pick up a piece of timber, sight it and plane it square, mark it up and fit it  .. these days, the skills required to work with any accuracy are gone ... save for a few rare finds and some highly talented and enthusiastic amateurs.  I suspect some of the most talented woodworkers in the country now are doing it for fun rather than money ...

Anyway, the shed is now nicely water and windproof ... It has a pre-winter appointment with my old Wayfarer (strip the antifouling, polish the gelcoat, fit a slot gasket, set the bailers flush, fit new foils) once that is done, the Merlin can begin to take shape. There's a nice warm glow you get from passing people in much newer/shinier boats in a "well used" Wayfarer :)

"Interested", I think that a competent boatbuilder could put the kit together in just a few days. HOWEVER, note that my kit comprises only the building frames in MDF and the plywood parts (cut to exact profile shape), not including the deck ply. Timber components have to be sourced elsewhere, but for the hull (ie excluding deck) they are only the following: stem, centreboard case internal framing, external keel. Others are right to warn about the total cost of a completed kit boat: spars, sails, fittings, trailer, covers, foils etc etc add up to a tidy sum.  

Robin, glad to hear that the shed is nearing completion, and I look forward to seeing your boat taking shape. Keep us posted.