Greg and all,
There are some valid points in everyone's musings on the strip vs (or
in addition to) molded composite. I would have to agree with Greg on
there not being a demand for composite boats. I think Roger will fully
fill the strip built market for the time being. VMG set up ahead of
the curve in the class development and they are now gone.
I disagree on a composite boat putting the strip boats out of the
market. I believe the opposite. A composite boat will make the strip
boats more desirable. More desirable, more cost. Emotionally
desirable, even more cost. Think Thistle. Woodies are hot class
boats. #1 is still racing and placing. If the class allowed woodies
to be built again, I think the composite new boat market would dry up
for years, even if the woodie was 25% more. Some Thistle builders
agree.
A molded composite boat can be built with the same performance
characteristics of a strip build boat. The advantage of a composite
boat lies in the complete uniformity one boat to the next. The most
effective way to build would be a cored boat (material to be
determined) and bag the boat. This gives uniform resin distribution,
close tolerances in designed weight and relatively fast production. We
might go the road of a class like the 210. They own the production
molds and work with a builder in steering the sales. For the
tolerances we are talking about, pre-preg autoclave is a little
overboard.
Production issues Greg brings up--block print through the hull and so
on--are non-issues and divert the discussion. Those are solvable
design/production issues, not real issues in developing a composite
molded boat.
As a class there are a number of ways we could go as we mature. A
plant near my shop is looking to diversify. I've talked to Bram about
them for a couple of years. They are a cutting edge plant with all the
bells and whistles. One of their clients for bagged carbon blagh blagh
custom panels (9 feet by 22 feet with all sorts of little molded spaces
and boxes etc) is the space division of Martin Marietta. There is a
critical knowledge and appreciation of quality and durability within
the company. 30, 40 years ago they built boats and have gone a
different (more profitable) way. There was an offer well over a year
ago, to use their engineering staff in the Portland office to develop
the lay-up and then make the molds to produce the Solo.
For the time being it's on the far back burner. There is no demand for
commercial built Solos at this time. We don't have the class momentum
to draw in people outside our club of afficinados. In a year or two,
that will change. And as the demand increases, we will have to
re-visit the debate.
Personally I think the first step will be kit Solo's. Hull, deck,
bulkheads etc built, shipped unassembled. You put it together like a
model airplane you built as a kid. Slightly different glue. This
could cut the cost of a Solo by 40 to 50% and put a bunch more boats on
the water fast.
The more work someone puts into the boat, the more "investment" they
will have in the boat. By investment I mean, and include, emotional
and dollar. The reason the 505 class is a model (beside Bram's love of
the 505) is the structure of the class has allowed both inexpensive
"home built" boats and high end Tuttle boats. To compete at the top,
you need a Tuttle at this point, but it wasn't always that way. there
are a ton of 5o's out there that much of the work was finished after
the pieces arrived in a box with "some assembly required."
That's my ramblings this morning before starting turn perfectly good
trees into sawdust followed by an afternoon of mixing a bit of epoxy.
Keith
Kanaka Creek Boatworks
On May 15, 2005, at 10:12 PM, Greg Ryan wrote:
Attracting more sailors to the class cant really be done just only by
having a moulded hull. We really have a lot of other avenues we should
be using as well as that. However, I really don't think there is a
problem with inconsistent hulls. No body has complained about this
issue to me. The swift solo is probably never going to be the class
where it will be possible to have such minor variations make "any"
differences what so ever to the outcome of "very" serious racing. OK,
49er yes, it is possible to tell between the extremely consistent
Olympic level crews in all the boats on the course, maybe a difference
in fineness of entry of 1/4 inch might be noticed under those
circumstances. Do we have the American disease of obsessing about
things like this before the obsessive actually becomes a class member,
I think we might. You know, .... the water content of the wood... how
much saw dust from the inside skins.... , shall we go on and on.
Basically these variations that some seem "concerned" about are
meaningless and may not even exist. We already have a lot of male
moulds out there in every builders garage. Unless you are talking
about going to the huge expense of CNCing a plug for the mould then
the mould would not be better than any one of the well made male jigs
already in existence. The extremely minor variations of
expand/contract, sand a bit more less wood here or there in the 1/4
inch skin are all just really non-issues and not worth getting
exercised about.
So, is what you are really saying, that you want the price to be less?
you want the hulls to be made quicker?
I'd agree with those goals, but do we have a long line of buyers
waiting to get boats that cant be made fast enough. Bram says he can
strip a boat in 10 hours. If he can come close to that, then any
properly set up competent commercial builder can do it too, better
than the old fart even. If a hull could be produced in 2 days work
then glassed in side and out the next 3 days... OK, the surface
finish would take longer but where is the imperative to pop the same
out of the mould, which itself will also take a few days to prepare
then a few days to make the boat as well, except that the boat will
be cheaper. Cheaper is something we should all want, and badly I
think. Its the only sane reason to be contemplating a mould process to
build the hull.
I think the class should investigate this but the stability of the
class should be the over-riding obsession right now.
There are a lot of problems though. I think we have a consensus to
ensure we get the very BEST fleet out there, I think that is
refreshing and unique to the owner operated class compared to the
profit driven approach. But I think working out how to BEST make the
synthetic core or balsa core hulls the "same" as the cedar cores in
performance and "WEIGHT" is going to take some time and a few
experimental hulls to look at things like balsa block print through,
fatigue of synthetic core, different material scantlings (that's the
hard part there are many options and I bet many opinions none of which
have any validity untill there are prototypes to compare) and the all
up weight etc. will internal arrangements have to be made to
accommodate the characteristics of the cores and the moulders want to
mould the internal parts to fit in with the manufacturing process. If
so, what would be the configuration of the bulkheads - 2 part CB
case/1/2 of #6 and #8 BH combo - assembled glued in place with
plexus, or same old design? For example a thicker balsa core could be
made as heavy as cedar, and would we mould the deck while we are at it
to reduce the cost or to find a builder who most likely would not fuss
with cedar stripping? would the transom be part of the deck or the
hull before sandwiching - it makes a difference - made of cedar or
balsa or aramid?? etc. What kind of variation would there be in the
weight of the hulls if they are not built from prepreg. If we prepreg
and vacuum and bake them who is going to have equipment for this
expensive build method (very high scale builders like Carol marine, or
some of the respected luminaries in the industry that built the US
49er, I hope not). How do we avoid repeating the Vanguard disaster
and will there really be a saving in cost! If we go with perfectionist
builders what is the likely cost outcome. I think you can all guess.
Lets look at the 49er, its made that way, but is simpler than our boat
inside and outside and therefore inherently more efficient to make.
The design was drawn so that the deck can fit the hull with easy to
bond self locating clampable flanges in all the right places, like the
rounded gunwale's flanges and the sugar scoop transom flange, unlike
the swift which has no flanges at all and uses butt joints instead
(first thing that needs to be changed?). After all the advantages of
the 49er build and its lack of comparable amounts of expensive carbon
in the build the 9er and Swift prices are still very comparable
despite several high quality and well organised international
factories popping them out at their max rate. The builders get
whatever they can for these high tech boats in the market and I
believe its illegal to set a builders price for them, so no guarantees
of decreased price for us. If I were building moulded Swifts that I
could tout as better than strip built for whatever reason, why in gods
name, would I sell them for less than the cost of the comparable
commercial strip built hull or much less than the next comparable
classes hull, - say the 49er. On the contrary, and I would not enter
the market untill there was a long waiting list anyway to guarantee my
profitability. So to guarantee our wanted lower costs, is the class
going to be its own builder? or mould owner?, what would we charge for
it? Is this a discussion we need to start?
Moreover, that would be the perfect opportunity for a crafty cheap
bastard like me, we could not stop someone moulding off a moulded boat
hull, then selling the plug as "never having been sailed" - and then
producing the identical hulls at "low to no" setup cost - what a
commercial advantage!!!. Presumably the identical shaped high quality
boats produced commercially by this method would pass inspection and
be certified by the copyright owner who just wants cheap, perfect
boats out there. If not, one could quite likely sue and win damages
AND the right to compete in the market as a certified builder. The
lawyers and courts like this approach. Unlike proprietary designs (all
most all of the other performance skiff classes) I don't think we have
a mechanism for controlling this, keeping prices at a minimum, and in
the process guaranteeing the high costs of the mould to the builder,
-- "at the moment". Is this a discussion we need to start?
My personal opinion is that it might not be a problem to have
competition anyway, (it always drives prices down and we do have a
mechanism for quality driven down by competition - withdrawal of
certification, rumor and innuendo). Finally, introduction of moulded
boats and the scenarios that I just outlined above will almost
certainly drive out any business doing stripped boats. Moulded boats
would very quickly become our only commercial option. What pressures
would this put on, for moulded decks, stripped hulls and home
builders, I don't know. There are a lot of very complicated
considerations. Most of all, these subtle changes moulded boats would
introduce would have to be voted on by a bunch of people now, rather
than just the copyright holder. Every one will have some degree of
baggage from the US OD view to the complete development box rule bent
like mine. We missed the chance to get this in the initial birth of
the class and perhaps that was a strategic mistake, or of no eventual
consequence as we might move smoothly to hybrid manufacturing methods.
One thing is for certain it's now a whole lot more complicated than
just "lets get a mould and build boats". There have already been
rumblings about changes of things like rigging in this a partial
development class, let alone the hull. I would guess moulds might get
voted down unless people had a chance to see and sail prototypes.
My thoughts are that a lot of people buy or make the boat because they
just want to sail it and those that race it don't define their lives
as if they are or are not the winner of the races. We are not talking
about an Olympic class here, if that's your bent then we could
suggest a 49er. Since there is no mould and no consensus or even any
data on the quality of the various cores why are we discussing this
over and over. Cant this wait till we get the data. Mould building and
then hull building from the mould will result in boats in the water at
best in late 2006. There's a process that has to be followed before
the production hulls can be turned out and it takes time and a great
deal of cash. If no builder steps forward to shoulder the costs then
its possible to make a few hand lay-up/bagged/105/205 prototypes with
cheap (low cycle) moulds off a real (nice) boat as a plug before we go
CNC plugging/moulding away and maybe that is what we should do to see
how the configurations perform and measure up. There is a lot for us
to do between now and then which has a much higher priority.
For me priority is getting my hull on the water and building my local
fleet by any means possible. If each one of us could convince just one
other friend or interested person that they could easily and cheaply
make a boat with our generous expert and experienced help, by using
our excess materials or old section templates (please only if they are
good condition) or with a set of Rogers CNC templates that would be a
very very good start indeed. That's my fleet building project this
month. Go to it!
Greg.
First person to persuade another new builder at his YC will get a slab
of fosters tinnies from me in a plain brown box.
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