Emily Ruth's Motor Mount

This is something that I made for my Somes Sound which is a derivation of the famous H-12 1/2. My boat was designed by John Brooks (Brooks Boat Designs) and built by myself in my shop on Bainbridge Island. Emily Ruth was launched in July of 2015.

- Jeffrey Patrick

Because the boat has such a lovely transom, I hated to spoil it by attaching a mount there. So a side mount was in order. However, there are few commercial possibilities and all are visually cumbersome. I wanted something that would not be visually, nor physically, intrusive when not in use.

The design wants two separate layers of bronze sheet. The uppermost is to hold the bracket and the lower is to provide a waterproof bottom and a place to cut drainage slots. Lacking any 1/4" bronze, I used two layers of 1/8" for the top after I silver-soldered them together. It should be noted that these thicknesses are not absolute. If one had a larger motor and a thicker deck, then heavier material could easily be substituted. I’m not sure that I’d use anything smaller than what I did, however.

The drawing shows that the main components are two keyholes which are beveled on their bottom sides to fit the flat head of standard 5/16 - 18 machine screws. Cutting these is the most difficult part of the fabrication. Of course a professional machinist using a mill would make short work of it. But since I lack such mechanization, I used a drill press, countersink bit, Dremel tool, and hand files.