3.5m HDPE jetboat

Thanks for posting that as I was curious about the manufacturing process.


Thanks to HDPE JET BOAT for the great thread.

 

cheers bud, thinking out side the box a bit,

its created a few challenges but working thru them. i sit in the boat for hours figuring out what can go wrong, how to fix it, will that change anything, its a long slow process but getting their now

 

Any progress to share? Are you going to join the mini boat forum and share your build there? It's too cool not to!

 

na being working issues with my other boat lately, i had a look at that other forum but happy with current ones i am using.

 

I definitely understand. I am on a lot of forums and it's hard to keep up with all of them, haha.

Keep us posted if you do make some headway on the mini, I am anxious to see. Good luck with solving your issues on your other boat.

 

engine mounts welded up

 

engine mounts all welded up jet intake welded in too

 

floor welded in, bulkhead in too, its a lot more ridged now

 

spoon in for intake its all done for the building of the hull, now i start the fit out

 

When working on mainline municipal water projects we often ended up with up to 30' "pups" of left-over 24" and 32" diameter pipe that had a 1 7/8" wall thickness. It ended up in the landfill. I could not help but think of dock pontoons, and if my wife had not put a limit on the scrap that I salvage, it would have come home with me.

 

There seem to be a number of questions about HDPE as a boat building material .
I'm not a boat person but rather an artist which explains why I'm not a boat person($)

I've been constructing sculpture of HDPE for some time. The requirements of structural integrity for public art work are rather stringent so you know it's probably pretty strong stuff.
Do NOT to use a flame to shape or to, in any way, process HDPE.
Always expose fresh plastic by scraping the weld prep area with sharp tools. I use a brazed carbide 'V' shaped scraper. The 'weld prep' area itself consists of a 45 deg. surface equal in its area to the thickness of the HDPE plate to be welded.The completed weld should be a fillet radius equal in area to the thickness of the two plates to be welded.
One of the attractive properties of HDPE is it's resistance to glue or chemical bonding. It must be welded. Stainless fasteners are fine to hold plates or sheets in position for welding but should be withdrawn and their holes welded closed at finish. HDPE is available in many colors, gages, and even in cast shapes, indeed it is used in 3D printing.

I use HDPE as a sculptural master pattern to investment cast silicon bronze.
One commenter was spot on with his observation that paint won't stick to HDPE.
Think of HDPE as a piece of marine plywood that can be bent, formed, inlayed, tooled, or welded, but never painted or glued.
Yes I said Inlayed. Just route out the title of your hole-in-the water on it's transom about 3/16" deep and weld fill the route-out with a contrasting color of HDPE to slightly over fill condition and sand flush. For a diffefent color under the waterline simply buy a different color HPDE plate and butt weld it to the bottom of the freeboard plate using the above formula for weld preps.
Finally, Laramie and Leister are two names of plastic welders (available through HotAir Tools.com) I use a Leister unit with manual plastic wire weld rod. It was a little over a thousand bucks with three spools of wire. For larger operations an auto-feed extrusion welder is recommended.
Bon Voyage!
Nigel

 

cheers, i guess

put some pics up of your art work, how do you over come the thermal movement of the sculptures?

 

HDPE jetboat

As you are aware HDPE is an elastomer.
This characteristic provides a subtle, environmentally resonant, kinetic feature to my work. Only the most keen observers or those predisposed to making photo comparisons of my sculptures across a days temperature map will notice this.

However since my sculptural works are imbued with multiple levels of irony their details and explanations would needlessly clutter this site.

Suffice it to say I'm not bound by engineering tolerances of +/-.001" for universal fit with mating parts but rather, emotional expression of ambient atmospheric synergies. If they droop or sag and return to near their original form it is desirable as an art piece that they do so. When I choose to freeze them against kinetisizm I investment cast them in bronze.

My view is that fine artwork that resonates with the environment (especially media with petrochemical origins) is ironically relevant.

At this moment I'm watching Seattle wring its political hands over cracking concrete floats for a new bridge across a large lake here, also replacing a crumbling seawall on the waterfront, I'm thinking HDPE.

I appreciate your request to view photos of my sculpture and will post them this week.
Cheers indeed jetboat! Tip a Guiness for me.
Nigel

 

What's the latest on your jetboat?

 

i got some bisalloy bars made up but they managed to stuff them up, now waiting for new ones to arrive then i can continue building the grill