Farr 3.7

Originally posted by rogue lovely video... am I the only one thinking, it don't need no kite to look fun?

So actually you are not building a pair of these at all Stu...

Originally posted by timnoyce Jack, I have AutoCAD mechanical so let me know if you want me to have a look at offsetting some of the lines to take into account skin thickness.

Tim, I reckon there would be a lot more to it than just offsetting thicknesses.

You and I, I'm sure, would agree that with a foam boat you'd want to vac bag the shell onto a male mould: the usual cheap ply/blockboard/mdf/whatever affair. Then you'd want to put the bulkheads and things in later. Rather than using the ply frames at the locations defined by the desired internal layout I reckon you'd be better off just building the mould with formers at regular intervals, 500mm or whatever works best for vac bagging male moulds, I'm out of date with that stuff. And unless you are building shedloads of boats all over the country there would probably only be one mould, so it might or might not be worth working out a brand new set of drawings to get the mould formers laser cut. For sure, I think, you wouldn't want to start with the bulkheads for the wood boat as a basis for a building mould.

Then when it comes to putting the bulkheads into the boat, the thing is that unlike the wooden boat the shape is already there, so the bulkheads aren't so critical for the odd millimetre as they are with the wood boats where they control the whole shape. I'd advise against ply bulkheads under the false floor on a foam shell because of a nasty experience I had with an IC: I discovered that ply bulkheads installed under the false floor on a foam shell had been quietly rotting away for years and had turned into mush. I think you'd be better off using foam bulkheads, even if you plan to use wood decks, and so although you could have pre cut ply templates I'm really not sure it would be much more work than the old fave of just cutting up bits of cardboard box with scissors until they fit and using them as templates.

The whole wood/foam thing is an interesting decision, and I change my mind about it regularly. There's no doubt in my mind that its easier to build a good boat in foam than wood, and the skills are easier to acquire. On the other hand, no matter how much care I take with clothes and stuff, I always seem to end up with fibre itch when I do a lot of work on foam boats, and somehow it never seems quite as rewarding as when you see the grain appear on the ply and the stringers with the first coat of varnish. Foam boats always seem to generate so much more damn dust too, and its not healthy stuff. I think wood boats are, on balance, probably more fun to build.

There's certainly no doubt in my mind that ply is more than good enough for the little Farr provided you use Farr's construction methods and don't try to build it like a GP14!

Originally posted by Andymac Originally posted by Bootscooter Just thinking....   Would there be anything in the rules that means the foredeck has to be that shape...... ie could you build a concave deck with a kite sock rather than fitting an under-deck chute?   On that subject, what are the pro's and con's of these?   Won't you still need to engineer the bowsprit thing in though?

QUOTE=Andymac] Bootscooter;A quick dekko at the class rules suggests that the cockpit and deck tolerances are +/- 15mm and that 'The foredeck must extend from the bow to, or aft of, straight lines joining the centre of station 2 and the centre of the sidestay chainplates' Not having reference to the templates, I would guess that the answer is no you can't have a concave deck. The tolerances are there to facilitate homebuilds and not manipulation to deliberately alter the shape from that intended. [/QUOTE]