I see your Schwartz is as big as mine!

Thanks everybody for the replies. It really did help give me some direction with this one and I think I've come up with a good solution. I am going to forge ahead with this hull. No matter what it will be a great test platform and I will certainly get it on the water sooner this way. My goals for the project are going to change a bit though. Instead of trying to make a great boat on the first shot I'm going to try and make a functional boat and learn as much as I can without spending too much time and money on this hull. This should let me cut a few corners and get onto the water much sooner.

Carbon skin - GONE
Internal carbon reinforcement - GONE
Perfect smooth finish - GONE

This will be a total test hull for learning the building techniques and getting the overall shape right. I intend it to be very underbuilt and expect it to last only one season. I better include some major buoyancy bags though. Plus, without any carbon skin of any kind, Mothball One MK 1 will be a super fast flying woody! Ahh, Mel Brooks would be proud.

Also, got my sail from the UPS guy today. A used Bladerider 8x thats in very nice shape. Thanks Bora!

Day 1- Part 1

The Mothball One project started this weekend and all in all it went pretty well, to a point. We learned a lot and had some great successes. But now I’m at a decision point. Keep reading and give me some direction as to what I should do next.

Step One- Cut and Connect the Plywood

We did this using a puzzle joint and it worked great. It took a bit of time to cut out the puzzle ends, but the finished product was fantastic. Totally smooth and very tough. Well worth the effort. This won’t ever come apart.

I would totally do the puzzle joint this again, but there was one small problem with it. You need a big solid flat place to lay the plywood on to let the joint cure. The best choice for this was the garage floor. The only issue was that the garage floor is cement and it was pretty cold, which massively extended the cure time of the epoxy. Not a huge deal, but it did mess up the construction schedule. We put the joint together at 9:00 AM and weren’t able to start working with the wood till almost 2:00, even with a heat tent. This is not a huge deal, but I would have preferred to have started the day before with this and let it set overnight.

Step Two- The Plans

After the epoxy cured I was able to draw on the plans for the hull. This was done by overlaying the paper plans and then punching holes through the paper into the wood and then connecting the dots. Went quite well actually.

Step Three- Cut it out

Cut along the lines using a jigsaw. Easy, good results. You also need to groove the plywood where you intend to fold it. I used a circular saw set so the blade only cut 1.5 mm of wood. Also filleted some of the joints so they would come together better.

Here was a good trick. Use clamps to connect the wood together with some scrap pieces when moving or flipping the wood. This helps prevent breaking the ply. We also attached some stiffening rails to the edges. These were attached with epoxy and screws which would be taken out later. We were done with this step by 5:00

Step Four- Form the Boat

Started again after dinner and began to form the boat. This was done using some water and my mom’s clothes iron (shhh, don’t tell). It went exactly as planned. It took about an hour to go from a flat piece of wood to a nice boat shape. Check it. Only 14 pounds at this point. Right where I wanted to be.

Step Five- Connect the Joints with Carbon Tape

Easy. Just apply epoxy to the wood, lay in the tape and smooth with your gloved fingers. It’s now10:00 P.M.

Now Walk Away.

Damit, I said walk away.

You just couldn’t walk away could you.

So here is where things got a bit weird. In an effort to flatten the bottom a bit before the carbon cured I put some weights in the boat help make the correct bottom shape and then went to bed. When we got up the next morning things had changed, for the worse. Over the night the weight in the boat had slowly collapsed the V bottom under the support. This looked very bad. Luckily the epoxy hadn’t totally cured and with a bit of extra tape and some heat we were able to bring it back into shape. Mostly. With a bit of fairing I could probably make it perfect again.

But now I’m at a junction. The project has actually gone quite well so far except for the one major screw up on my part and we have learned a lot. But there are already some things I would change and I need to decide if I want to just keep going with this hull or start over again and make the changes before I invest any more time and effort into this boat. At this point I only have one day, 1.5 sheets of plywood and 30ft of carbon tape invested.

What would I change? Well not that much, but it may be significant in the long run. First I’d change bottom profile of the boat. It’s not bad, but the transition from the V bottom to the flat bottom is not as good as I’d like. I’d also maybe make the bottom a bit flatter. Secondly I’d let the hull flair wider when I tape in the first joints. This is supposed to be stressed plywood and it didn’t take much stress to get it into the final shape at the end. The added stress would make the whole hull stiffer. I’d also make the stiffening rails a bit smaller to reduce weight and use some supports on the stern to keep the ply from bending too much initially. These problems combined with my screw up on hull make me want to start over completely, but it’s not that bad and I could certainly salvage what I have now and make a functioning boat.

What do YOU think? Leave a comment.