Tornado class plans

[corsaro]

Hallo, I'm new in this forum,
Sorry for my english

My question is:

There is a plan of tornado class catamaran for home builder?


thanks

[joz]

Originally Posted by corsaro

Hallo, I'm new in this forum,
Sorry for my english

My question is:

There is a plan of tornado class catamaran for home builder?


thanks

corsaro

Try the following website to the Tornado Class

www.tornado.org and click on the Italian flag which will take you to the Class Association in Italy to which they may have plans or where they can get them from.

[Chris Ostlind]

Corsaro,

You can find a full set of building plans for the Tornado at this link:
http://www.thebeachcats.com/modules....download&cid=6

This is a 16.8 Mb download with photos and full, dimensioned drawings so have fun.

Below are a couple of pages from the package as a sample.

Chris Ostlind

[Roy Reroma]

Hi!!! I'm new to the group...from the Phils.

I was able to but a plan from a fellow member in the yahoo group. It consist of a booklet and blue prints. Most of the pages shown on thebeachcats site are scanned copies of the booklet. Am not sure what the current copyright
of this plan but the guy I bought it from said he has never built a boat. So I don't know whether I can make copies.

[TTS]

You will also find Tornado plans availble through Gougen Brothers/West System Epoxy. You can either get lines to build using cold molded or plans for tortured plywood construction. Mine is built with the later and it was a six month project from initial planning to completion and launch. It was not that difficult to build and measured in class legal. Mine was 8 pounds over minimun class weight and had I been a little more delicate with the epoxy saturation in the glass and keel it probably would have been below minimum weight. It is still sailing hard 19 years later.

[Rolf Nilsen]

The plans on thebeachcats site are the early Jerry Houlton plans and some russian plans. Jerry bought some moulds for cold moulding from Gougeon bros. after and while and stopped doing tortured ply T's. The plans are a collective work and not copyrighted as far as is known.
The copyright holder to the russian plans have consented to making the plans available.
You can buy Tornado building plans from ISAF, but the sets available on thebeachcats are superior. The measuring templates for the Tornado on the other hand are copyrighted..
If you build a Tornado, you must pay a building fee to the International Tornado association which again pay a fee or used to pay a fee to the designer, Rodney Marsh.

I always heard that the Gougeon cold moulded boats with their internal truss framwork was very stiff. I have a friend with a Gougeon boat, but it has gone overweight and still have the old softish crossbeams so it's hard to compare with Marstrom boats. In their day the Gougeon boats where the boats to beat, but that changed with Marstroms boats as it was rumours that it was faster in a chop. Just rumours, but still enough to kill off the wooden boats. Marstroms tornados sell for US$32.000,- ex. VAT and shipping.. Homebuilding for local racing should be a good option if you have the time and a fleet nearby. Buying an old, used, Tornado would be a lot cheaper than homebuilding and buying all the gear new. Alu Tornado masts are found all over the place these days, I have secured two for myself..

TTS, what kind of beams do you have on your boat, and how stiff is it compared to Marstroms?

And by the way, I have heard about the Gougeon cedar tornados and plywood tornados, but no strip plank tornados. Why not? Should be stiffer and potentially lighter if built that way?

[TTS]

Rolf,

I think there are two reason for not seeing strip planked tornados out there and possibly more. To build a strip planked hull you will need to loft out the lines, set up bulkheads and build on top of those. It is a much more time consuming process than cold molding was if you were building more than a one off boat. The plywood construction, though limited by the constraints of shaping the hull, was easy, fast, efficient and if done correctly measured in. It also produced very stiff hulls. Probably not as stiff as the Houlton hull, but stiifer than the old Sailcrafts and reg Whites and much stiffer than the Panthercraft hulls. I have Sailcraft of canada beams on my boat and feel that the hulls themselves are close to as stiff as Marstrom hulls, but the beams are not anywhere near as stiff, so I probably have more hull walk then Marstroms do. I have always thought it a shame, that with the advent of composite hulls, that the cold molded boats faded away. I have sailed on the folloing T's. Panthercraft, Sailcraft of canada, Reg White, Marstrom, Mark Lindsay, Gougeon, Houlton, Yankee Laminates, a German & Australian boat (do not know the builders) and quite a few home built from glass/foam/glass to wooden ones. Some have measured in and others did not. Most of the wood or plywood where very stiff hulls, it was the beams and beam boxes that sometimes showed the difference. The other thing that I think that Marstrom got right was the shape. Their boats were faster than the other production boats so Sailcraft closed, Reg White moved on and Paul Stanley of Yankee Laminates could not get sailors to give him a chance. His boats were extremely well built at Concordia yatchs in South Dartmouth, MA. He had done a couple of things differently than Marstrom had and in hindsight he may not have made those chooses. He pushed the freeboard in the bows to the maximum and pushed the flaired the bows at the deck line out to the max as well. With some of the current thoughts in design, he might have gone for a narrower/finer entry. I would like to see at least one or two more builders make headway in the market, but who knows. do you know what is happening with Graham Eeles? Anyway, rolf those are my thoughts.

[TTS]

And back to the other thought, strip planking. I built a 40' tri (Skyhook" Chris White design, out of Western red Cedar, strip planked. I do not know if you could have gotten the weight down enough in that process to make the boat at or below class minimum. It would be an extremely stiff shell, but I think that you would be working with 3mm strips which would almost be like full scale model making and then inner and outer glass skins. If you were not all the way up there in Norway and over here, I would attempt that project with you.

[Rolf Nilsen]

Thanks for the nice reply. I also think wood an excellent material which I would like to see more boats made of. Carbon/nomex/foam is very stiff, but wood.. sight..
If the stations was set up correctly for stripping, a builder would not have the uncertainty stressed or tortured ply brings with regards to measuring in and eventual cracks. But what I am really asking for is how 'stiff' in practical sailing a strip planked hull would be compared to glassed ply. I agree that the beams and beam seats are more important for hull walk, but it would be fun to compare with a Marstrom.

4mm strips are used in stripper kayaks and canoes. Easy to work with and probably sands down to about 3.5mm. The Gougeon book also say that panel stiffness is very good compared to plywood.

So, would a stripper Tornado be as stiff and light as a Marstrom if beams and beam seats were of comparable quality :-)
We are about to commence with no less than three F-16s in strip, so opinions and comments is highly interesting.

[TTS]

I honestly think that compared to glass/foam/glass that glass/wood/glass is stiffer and stronger. Keep me posted with the details of the three F-16's that you are building. i would be very interested to see how they develop. Again, my feeling is that if the shape can be gotten down correctly and the weight does not become an issue, I would rather have a wood (marstrom) than a glass one.

[Rolf Nilsen]

To stop weight from becoming a problem epoxy would have to be kept to a minimum. Instead of a plain weave or satin/crowfoot weave, unidirectional glass would be preferable. But as always when homebuilding, it depends on the budget and what can be sourced.

I dont know how the Eeles Tornado does. It has been very quiet about that boat lately, perhaps becouse Barney and Walsh have not peaked with it? They finished 16th at the worlds in Cascais recently, but I dont know if they used the Eeles boat.

I plan on posting regularly about the F-16 project in my blog, so it will be easy following it.

[Pericles]

Here are a few Tornado websites.

http://www.grahameeles.com/

http://www.sailing.org/default.asp?I...xWSG134b0WRNga

http://www.swell-catamarans.co.uk/contact/index.html

http://www.spitfiresailing.org.uk/da...ss%20rules.pdf

Pericles

[Rolf Nilsen]

Sorry for bringing an old thread to back to life!

Just tought I should let you know that the Blade F-16 project I mentioned now is underways. Will be very interesting to find out what the weight of the finished hull comes down to! There is a blog we update after each building session at: http://woodastic.blogspot.com/