Pondering in Arkansas,
I would think that a good starting point would be to have some real numbers
as they relate to our currently finished boats. No doubt the class rules
were well written and thought out, but how many boats have been weighed and
put through the swing test?
I just weighed a couple of 6 inch strips and came up with .155 oz and .180
oz? If my math is correct, that is about a 13% variance between 2 strips at
6 inches. I would be curious to see how the existing boats fit into our
present class rules?
I for one am building this for myself and to have some fun. Racing is
secondary and only a social and performance aspect of the whole process.
I've owned a 35' wood boat and see varnishing a 14' hull as a "walk in the
park". It had a 52' Sitka spruce mast that was stripped down a couple of
times and finished with 8 or so coats of varnish. As a motto for life goes,
"It's the journey and not the destination" that matters. If you don't enjoy
building, buy one from Roger. When Roger can't meet the demand, consider
the alternatives. I look forward to getting this out of my office and
building a real shop so I can build a few more.
I'm sure Mike or Keith isn't enjoying sailing less because they purchased a
boat. I wish I was out sailing instead of sanding, but wouldn't give up the
process.
Rob
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith [mailto:keith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 10:38 AM
To: Greg Ryan
Cc: swiftsolo@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Hull construction, some ramblings while I pick the epoxy off my
fingers.
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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>
>
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