Can everybody design?

The Pyramid of Marbles is one of the best descriptions I've heard yet about our creaking, failing economic industrial system, with its bloated elites and increasing unruly masses of unemployed angry people.
Thanks viking north!
Back to the subject, sort of.
I think LFHerreshoff said something about the head and hands working together, because neither could accomplish anything on its own, really applies to our original 'can anyone design' question.
The beginning amateur with little building experience can draw, argue, read, discuss and all that until the worms come up but I still don't see a boat floating there. He or she is still all air and froth. It's all head, no hands.
The amateur with the gumption to build what he/she drew soon runs his/her nose into the brick wall of reality as to available materials and their weight, cost, bending modulus, working temperatures, actual versus theoretical over and over and over. Head and hands work together.
If he/she was a good designer all will go well, if not he/she has learned a very valuable life lesson, we hope.
The second boat is often much better.
Some traditionally inclined amateur designer/builders, myself included, shamelessly rip off and adapt time proven and workable solutions to nautical problems, because we are lazy and only want to build things that function right out of the box. Our efforts may seem a little off the mainstream but often sail well and last a long time, because we're not trying to pioneer in a field that stretches so far back in antiquity that a boat may have been man's first tool after the knife and hammer.
Even so, strange, out of bounds, parameter-stretching design is essential to really progress and try out new things, but like any R & D, it has little hope of immediate profit. Only amateurs seem to pursue some lines of thought that other designers dismiss as without a market.
Please give us more amateur designers who build their own ideas.
Russell Brown, the designer/builder of SKEETER shown here, is far from an amateur, but he does think out of the box managing to combine tradition and innovation.

 

Either I dont understand what you are saying , or I disagree with most of it.
Very depressing.

 

Just trying to say that starry-eyed amateurs are really essential, because the good ones turn into the leading professionals of tomorrow.
Apologies for obfuscation but it seems to be the norm these days.

 

Maybe that last rum was too much but my reading is you both are saying the same thing and I agree ---Geo.

 

Yes, the young enthusiastic amateur, no matter how far off the mark in his ideas, should be encouraged to follow them to their conclusion, preferably on paper or in model form, and at his/her own expense. This is how we all learn, by making mistakes. The young know it all, so are hard to teach. The older ones aren't so sure of their infallibility.
How can I disavow the young man I once was? Carrying my piddly little St Pierre dory conversion design drawings to John Gardner in the Mystic Seaport Small Boat shop, I felt so overwhelmed that winter day in 1972.
Coming in to work on re-rigging the CHARLES W MORGAN as a cocky CG vet I soon learned how unskilled and unperceptive my limited traditional boat education had left me as I learned 1840s tech at a furious pace. And I don't mean ABCs education, but practical common sense boat and shipbuilding, sailing and maintenance, and the history of how "others done it" to make it easier and more successful for us to do it.
Mr. Gardner (The Dory Book, Building Useful Small Craft etc) spent a lot of time with me, showing what I'd gotten wrong and encouraging me to stop re-inventing the wheel, but adapt the successful things of the past to the needs of the future as he was doing with epoxy at the time.
At 22 I was quickly turning into a pro reeking of pine tar and cedar chips, dragging a razor sharp adze behind his drooling, shuffling-gaited self, like all the other 70 and 80 year old guys that worked there. Being in the thick of CHARLES W MORGAN, JOSEPH CONRAD, L.A. DUNTON, and EMMA C. BERRY's restorations at the time turned an amateur into something else.
Most of that has worn off, but BERTIE is still an ongoing creative project and speaks for creative amateur design.
This I can credit to the professionals like Don Arques, Bruce Northrup, Pete Culler and others who kept me from "being stupid". I read Herreshoff, Chapelle and others, but I was, and remain strictly an amateur designer with several successful boats to show for it, by adapting the well-developed designs of the past.

 

Ok Frank that was sneaky, deleating your last post, now my post looks like the last rum was really too much and I want to have another one --- what am I to do?-Geo.

 

The word “professional” can describe someone who simply works for a living or has a calling for his/her chosen field, but either way few if any have the funds to pursue their own dreams even if they are qualified to do so, so the market connection is generally non-negotiable. The amateur has a much lower chance of success, fortunately there are a lot more of them . . .

The important thing for the professional to remember is, the amateur is very rarely trying to do him/her out of a job; mostly we want to prove or disprove a point.

 

St. Pierre Dory

Ok to remain on topic but change the drift a little. While I have designed and built my share of boats I do not consider myself a designer. I really didn't design per say just used other peoples rule of thumb quick and dirty engineering to do the builds. On this build I have hired a designer to help me on certain parts of the engineering on an as need basis. I could hire him to do the whole design but I want to be a part of that on my own. While this combination will not work for everyone(the builder would have to have a certain level of experience) and the designer would have to be open minded enough to see one self as sort of a resorse person when needed. My experience thus far has nothing but praise and I don't know if this is the norm out there but there in lies the question, how many professionals out there are open to this type of working model-- Geo.

P.S. Battan real working St Pierre Dorys on a day of celebration in St Pierre

 

Question here for Bataan.

I see myself, definately an amateur, who sees boat design as gone a bit mad, having gone with all the whistles and bells etc, all the top of the range materials productions etc. I would like to go a little bit back to basics and give the oportunity for people to access boats again, I appreciate that this may sound a little idealistic, but method I havent finalised yet but the point is I would like to go back to what has worked, what is established,
Where does this put me? I dont out myself up there with the experts but I would like to plow my furrow.

Incidently I am very interested in combining the design features of caravans, by which imean ergonomics, packing such a lot into such a small space so well, with boats to ( I feel) expand the boandaries of boat use,
(this is a project for when Im not so much an amateur anymore but that is what I would like to explore)
Opinions please,
Sam

 

Despite the rum , I thought best not to comment to quickly .
Seeing as that did not work, I deleted my post.

 

Ahhh it's ok I poured one anyway Anyhow any views on post 218-- Geo.

 

I remember learning about cars . My neighbor was a real hot rodder, who could put almost any thing together and make it work. He could tear a engine down and replace a piston in less that a day. I would help him and listen to every word he had to say about cars.
I learned a lot from that guy.

 

Land yachts verses water yachts

Bigbowen; Built both all my life, amazing how much they have in common, many of my friends said during this build, I thought you only built boats, my reply think of this as a boat inverted.This build took 8 months--Geo.

 

Viking,
Im very much impressed, Im not so sure I should have mentioned that then because other people seem to be doing it a LOT better haha,
Have you thought about combining the two because I think there is a lot that the boat community could learn from caravans, in that packing all the kit in to a tiny space, without losing any of the traditional attributes of the small boat, I got the idea from trailer-tents, a small (ish) trailer, from which fold out a HUGE tent, with all the neccesary equipment. most of what is contained in a caravan,
I dont know if you follow my drift there, I hope you did. but I would like your opinion,
Cheers
Sam

 

magnitude

I'm a boat designer, my my own definition only. My boats are small rowing boats and as such there isn't too much to go wrong. If I wanted something more involved, I would do a concept drawing and then give it to a real profesional to get the job done. A point to reference: I'd like to build either a 16' Great Pelican or an 18' Wayfarer dinghy. The departure would come in wanting a flush deck cabin. In either case, I'd go back to the designer to get it really designed right. I just don't have the expertise to do the necessary calculations to have a safe, functional boat. That's when there is just no substitute for a profesional. I'll treat my own head cold, but for brain surgery, I want an expert! right now, here in Masachusetts, there is an on-going investigation of the sinking of the fishing vesel 'Patriot". Much is being made of the fact that she was built with no plans or blueprints,and then modified for another fishery with no N. A. involved. No one knows why she went down, but a deficiency in the boat is highly suspect.