Recommended texts

Hello, I am new to the fourm and boat design as well. I'm looking at designing and building a rowing shell. It will be a two man sculling boat used for competition, with sliding seats and the hole bit. I would like to be able to rig the boat for solo recreational/workout use as well. I've searched a few threads and found one in paticular that was interesting, but wasn't really what I had in mind.

To give you a little bit of my back ground, I have a mechanical engineering degree and I've been around boats my entire life. When I was a child I built a boat for a weed eater engine. It didn't end up working very well due to some serious cavitation problems. Since then I've never thought about designing a new boat until now. However, I do consider my self somewhat skilled with my hands as well. I've done some boat repair in the past as well as other major fiberlgass projects. I was on the rowing crew in college and now that I'm a few years into my career (I do work in design, however its a totally unrelated field) I'm thinking about getting back into the sport.

Anyways, I have no idea where to start. Can someone recommend me a text for this type of boat that someone with my technical background can appreciate. I'm unfamiliar with boat related design terminology and what the important parameters to design for are. I want to educate myself before starting so I don't waste a time and money. Basically I'm admitting I know nothing about boat design, however working in design grants me access to design software pro-engineer, autocad, and hopefully in the near future we can get our fluent license back $$$.

I appreciate your time and any respones I recieve.

Aaron

 

Hello,
You could start here: http://www.greenval.com/jwinters.html - in particular the last 3 links are a very nice primer on design of kayaks (and rowing shells in general):
"The Shape of the Canoe, Part 1: Frictional Resistance"
"The Shape of the Canoe, Part 2: Residual Resistance"
"The Shape of the Canoe, Part 3: Applying the Theory"

Also, take a look at Leo Lazauskas' page about kayaks:
http://www.cyberiad.net/kayak.htm
some excellent info over there, too.

Hope that will help. Cheers!

 

Read Dave Gerr's "The Nature of Boats" to get an idea why boats are designed the way they are. Many useful analysis are shown, rule of thumb formulae, examples, pitfalls, etc..
However, boat designers out there know considerably more than that book could teach due to specialization. So the next step would be to know exactly what boat you want to build. Then there are a lot of books out there.
I could be wrong, but I believe Graham(e?) KIng has written on rowing shells.

 

first I would look around the internet for plans. Look at what is available. If it fits your need then buy the plans. If not adapt from them. Try here http://www.clcboats.com/shop/boats/rowboats/oxford-rowing-shell-wooden-boat-kit.html
or here http://www.rowvirusboats.com/seadog/index.html
http://www.littlerivermarine.com/

There a lots available

Supposedly the very best are Pocock Shell. http://www.pocock.com/shelldesign.html

 

thank you everyone for the recomendations so far

 

Hi Aaron, seems like we're travelling down a simlar route, care to contact me off list?.
Mike

 

Mike, that sounds fine. How would you like to contact one another?