To make or to buy

My boat can be built with a kit. Cheasapeak Light Craft do sell them for about $1100. And if you want to sail with it, you have to spend an extra $955. I want to save some mosatisfactory to make everything by yourself.

The boat will be a saling boat. You can buy a simple aluminum mast, boom and gaff, but I willl make them of wood and epoxy. It can't be that complicated. The best way to prevent them from warping is to glue two halves with epoxy. Because it is still freezing in the shed, I have to wait until it is warm enough.


Today I have studied sailmaking. Sailrite in the USA soes sell kits for sewing it. The simpel little sail kit still costs $165. Sailmaking is not easy. It is not just a 2D square but it has to have a sort of curve in order to make the boat sail. I have found software that can help you to design the exact parts of the sail. It generates a CAD file whoch can be used in a sailcut machine. I hope to find a way in which I can print it scale 1:1.

I expected to easily find a shop for the cloth, but I have not found any until now. Luckily I have plenty of time.

Another side project: the oars. Here is a webpage about the making. There are oars with flat blades and with spoon blades. The last ones are a bit more difficult to make. The first ones do fit better with the type of my boat, I think. I don't know yet what sort of wood I need.

The dimensions of the oars are important. There are some formulas for it. Here is one.



Reacties

Een reactie posten

Populaire posts van deze blog

Review

Having used the boat for nine months now, I can give a sort of review. First: until now I only have rowed the boat. Sailing will soon be possible, because I finally made the sail. But since the completion of the boat, I rowed it weekly. What can I say? Well, rowing with it is fun. Some points: You need something like a cushion as a seat. I used a piece of foam which I normally use for my knees when gardening. When the wind blows more than 3 Bft, waves make the boat wet. You will need a small bucket. With head wind, rowing is a lot heavier. The boat can carry a lot of load. I have transported probably a hundred kgs of timber in the boat without any problems.  With some load on the backseat, the boat seems to be 'flatter' on the water.  Position of the oars is perfect. The handles of the oars are not perfectly round. It would be better if they were. The diameter is a bit small. A couple of mm's more is better for me. After two hours of rowing, I get blisters. The me
Meer lezen

Filleting the joints

Afbeelding
Time to fill the gaps between the overlapping planks. To prevent dirty spots on the hull, I used a lot of tape, inside and outside. And in the little holes of the stitches, I put cocktail sticks, brake them just at the surface of the hull and sanded the spots. That will look better than dark little epoxy filled holes.  During the process of preparing the epoxy filler, I put another layer on the inside of the daggerboard box and the rudder holder. Then I thickened the epoxy with glass powder and some home made wood powder (from the sanding machine). Just thin enough for the syringe. Filling the room between the planks was easy, but with  the last 1/4 to do, I had to make another cup of epoxy. After doing that, the syringe stuck because of the curing epoxy. I did the rest with a filler knife. After one hour, I tried to smoothen the epoxy with a gloved finger  that I make wet with denatured alcohol, but that was not easy. Final smoothening must be done with sanding paper later
Meer lezen

Epoxy

Afbeelding
The epoxy stuff arrived. Most materials for the expoy work could be ordered from one and the same company. Alltogether I'll need a lot of small but essential things. Besides the epoxy (I ordered the 'slow' variant) and the glass cloth, also things like stirring sticks, brushes, rolls, syringes, etc. They told me that the minimum temperature for the epoxy was 8 degrees bit in the package on the instructions was mentioned 12 degrees. Let's not start too early.
Meer lezen