I'm new, and I want to build a concept boat

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by Schoonner, Dec 7, 2011.

  1. viking north
    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 1,868
    Likes: 94, Points: 48, Legacy Rep: 1146
    Location: Newfoundland & Nova Scotia

    viking north VINLAND

    Schooner -- I'm 95% sure Westlawn offers home study, seems to me my friend here in Nova Scotia did it that way. Sorry my post disappeaed but i did an edit on it and somehow it or I caused it to completely delete, however it was a push on my part to impress that it would be a good move for you as PAR had suggested previous. --Geo.
     
  2. JRD
    Joined: May 2010
    Posts: 232
    Likes: 20, Points: 18, Legacy Rep: 192
    Location: New Zealand

    JRD Senior Member

    If you have a life changing goal that you want so much to achieve, then You will surely find a way.

    Viking's suggestion of home study may fit your unconventional schedule a little better than a routine of classes.
     
  3. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    I missed the home study part. I am reading about knots, sails, and things as much as I can. I love Northsails (http://www.northsails.com/) sail making methods. When I was into road biking, I wanted to put fins on the forks that caused a slight downdraft at the front. It slowed you down too much with drag, and needed to change attitude and roll in order to do what I wanted so I abandoned it. I was able determine how to slow the bike down faster on a steep descent with disc brakes, but they would have made the bike heavy. Not that being heavy in that exact spot was entirely a bad thing, but I doubted that anyone would want to use it.

    I talked extensively with one of the leading manufactures of composite bikes about new ways to weave carbon fiber yarn into a fabric, but it I didn't know how I was going to even get carbon fiber yarn so I could do what I needed to in order for him to take me seriously. For instance, I wanted to create a damped carbon fiber frame by wrapping a very thin string of elastomer with the carbon fiber. I wanted to warp the carbon the same way as a chain link fence is woven with the elastomer thread in the middle and wrapped tightly. The idea was that I could reduce the felt road noise by using a very thin carbon fiber and elastomer tape woven around the carbon fiber frame by hand. I figured he could lay it up in the right directions on the frame to maximize it's effectiveness.

    EDIT:: I just thought of a way to make a machine that would make the new weave. It's actually pretty easy now that I have thought about it. Anyway's I'm going to make a timid call to a man who has a sailboat for sale for $100.00 or best offer. It is gutted, but to me, that is PERFECT! Since I can build her up the way I want, Maybe like a Pacific Seafraft Dana or something. I am good with wood working tools, and I understand a little about fiberglass, so I think maybe if I have internet on the boat I could study and work on my boat and learn about it. (I hope it floats!!) ((If it floats, why not buy it?)) I can always work off a motor by taking things apart or something right?
     
  4. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    I must be missing posts. I just found one that I didn't read yet. I tried calling about the $100.00 sailboat, but nobody answered. I hope they did not mean $1000.00 and that it will float for the next year or so till I have the money for a trailer.... err maybe it will come with one? Idk. Either that, or I would have to pay someone to dry dock it for me. I know nothing yet, and I hope that it will work out for me.

    I hope I'm buying a boat for all the right reasons and that I can moor out in the water and still be able to go to work.

    Maybe I'll just stay as comfy as I can in my 25ft fifth wheel travel trailer, and home school.

    If I home school can I take tests as soon as I want to and accelerate things a little so I don't get bored, or slow down on stuff I need to work more on?
     
  5. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    Back to the drawing board so to speak. The frames... err bulkheads?... are probably what people use to build the K800 right? So, they would probably just build the frames and never know if the hull lines were off if they didn't put the plans into a 3d cad program right? I read that there are only about 10 boats that have ever been completed off the design and that support for the design is gone.

    I have an idea, but it would require some help from someone with cad experience. I need to know if the lines everywhere match up on station1/2, and station 1. I don't know if I have somehow messed up my templates and whether or not it is my fault that things are not lining up.

    Apparently, I didn't save my work and have to go and redo 1/2 and 1 again in order to show you an illustration. I have other stuff I have to do right now though while my neck is sore from staring at dots and lines too much.

    I decided there are lots of things I don't like about the k800. At first it seemed Soooo simple and easy to build, but I think that while it is pleasing to the eye it might be a little fat for my liking.
     
  6. FMS
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posts: 611
    Likes: 22, Points: 18, Legacy Rep: 227
    Location: united states

    FMS Senior Member

    Schoonner, what existing boats have you sailed which are close to what you are trying to design? That should be your first step.

    Second, if you want to draw for the sake of drawing now, I would recommend moving to software like freeship instead of blender. Using freeship should start you thinking more in proper marine vocabulary than blender which is more about rendering any shape.
     
  7. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    COOOL! thanks! freeship might be just what I was looking for.

    EDIT:: All my experience has been with powerboats.
     
  8. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    The K800 is not fair.

    I have proof now. Want to see the pictures?

    The first illustration shows the template side view. You can also see that the front/back view template (Marked with a yellow line.) is not not at the end of the unfinished hull. The end of the unfinished hull is the beginning of the raised deck on the side view, but the front view shows the deck starting to raise at the next like ahead of where it needs to.

    [​IMG]

    Uploaded with ImageShack.us

    That's not all that is wrong with these plans.

    THe next picture shows the front/back view template thing.

    [​IMG]

    Uploaded with ImageShack.us



    =0(
     
  9. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    I don't know if it is blender or what, freeship doesn't work on my computer because of a lack of microsoft software. The lines are all way off no matter what I do. I was able to get a general shape, and I will work on it more later, but right now I'm too tired to care about much. [​IMG]

    Uploaded with ImageShack.us


    EDIT::
    HUmm... maybe the roof over the cabin should be white...
     
  10. thedutchtouch
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 91
    Likes: 2, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 39
    Location: baltimore. MD

    thedutchtouch Junior Member

    i'm having some difficulty following this, but are you working from plans you paid for or images you found online? many times online study plans aren't drawn to scale which would be a reason why your drawings aren't matching up. It seems like you need to spend some more time looking through designs and studying what you want out of the boat, and then people will be able to help you find plans that you like. I'd highly reccomend NOT building a boat of this size as a first build/first foray into boatuilding, it can be done, but most have found that it's easier to start small, ie a canoe, rowboat or other easier to build craft, with a smaller budget. you'll make mistakes, part of the building experience as a homebuilder is figuring out how to correct them.
     
  11. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    Thanks, I'm not building, I'm learning to design.

    I have two plans I'm working from, and both of them are free internet downloads.

    That the drawings are not scale makes sense now. I decided to start measuring everything. I really didn't want to, but I got to about the third bulkhead, and I knew I had to start over. Which I do now anyways, because while saving the file my computer overheated and shutdown. (Not good on hardware to do that.) Now I know my computer might not be up to par for 5 gazillion tabs in firefox, and painting lines on the hull and moving them around while using a calculator and Gimp. Oh well, it's only an acer laptop. <Shrug> maybe I shouldn't try going so fast.

    EDIT:: I want something that looks like a racing boat. I understand how to put models together very well. I got a wooden model ship from my neighbor, and it came with instructions I didn't understand and a bunch of sticks and pieces of plywood. I thought that the instructions were just badly translated from Italian where the model ship was made. I soaked all the planks in a bathtub and superglued the frame together when I realized that the markings on the wood were horribly not right and that I needed to trim everything. I did the best I could and that was buildable, but nowhere near accurate. Well guess what, It was a model, it wasn't even a real ship once, and it was horrible because I didn't have a clue how bad it was drawn so I started changing the design so it would look better. Then I decided that if it had a thicker rubbing strake that jutted out off the boat and angled the top of the bulwark inward it would do two things, It would displace about the same amount of water as the original straight vertical bulwarks and round projectiles might bounce off the bulwarks and back in the direction it came from with a thick and protruding handrail. The bulwarks would be thicker and heavier, (A good thing when protecting a ship mate from being hit by a projectile that is up to 32 pounds of metal probably moving at something like 4 or 5 or maybe even 8 or 9 hundred feet per second.) but it would be balanced, it would be angled, and it would work more like the bluenose II rubbing strake displacing a little more water on the side and countering some of the sail forces.

    So, I cut the hull apart and rebuilt it. When I found Model Ship World online and uploaded pictures, I was greeted warmly and with enthusiasm and found out how to really build the hull by reading build logs. Are there build logs here?

    Oh, and I had measured and played with the model ship before I took it apart and I can say without a doubt that the enlarged rubbing strake might be part of bluenose's secret to going fast because a little bit goes a LONG way and I can probably sail my model on a pond with anything less than a 12mph wind and not have to worry too much about it capsizing. I also put enough ballast in it and made the keel jut out of the bottom about 12% of the distance from the waterline to the end of the planks and stripped copper wires then coated the cavity with aluminum weather seal tape and soldered the wires together to make a solid metal mass.
     
  12. WestVanHan
    Joined: Aug 2009
    Posts: 1,373
    Likes: 56, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 746
    Location: Vancouver

    WestVanHan Not a Senior Member

    You should check mooring laws and costs for liveaboard boats at marinas before ditching your 25' RV.

    To get that amount of room in a sailboat you'd need it to be at least 35' to 40', which will cost a lot more than $100.
     
  13. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    Yeah, I know, It is a 27ft and might already be gone. I can live at the marina for 14 days, and moored to a buoy for 14 days, but I have to move around and stuff which is fine. If I had two slips at $200.00 I might be able to move from one marina, to another marina and still pay less rent than I will be paying soon. (rent is going up here at the second to worst trailerpark in washington state. =0(
     
  14. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    Cool!! I just figured out why there is a 'LOFT' (K800-LOFT.dxf) file in the K800 file downloads, It probably shows the correct shapes and then all I have to to is get the distances between them right. YAY!! I don't have to do all the work I thought I did!!

    I just figured out how to use LibreCAD to convert individual lofted frames to pictures so I can put them in blender and make pretty illustrations.

    I feel smart because I had to copy and paste files into the right paths in order to get a different CAD program running in Linux, and I did it in like 2 minutes.

    EDIT::

    Where is frame " O " ? There is A through P, without an O?
     

  15. Schoonner
    Joined: Nov 2011
    Posts: 388
    Likes: 3, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 38
    Location: Washington State USA

    Schoonner Senior Member

    I think I know why these plans are free. What is the easiest way to measure the hull? I was thinking of 'cutting' it into the plank area to find out how much plywood I would actually need to build her by squaring it off.

    Also, how do I know roughly how much plywood weighs per square foot? I think this is going to be really heavy, but I don't know for sure how much it weighs. I doubt it is very Light, I've cut marine grade plywood that thick before, and this will take a LOT more than I've ever cut with any precision in one day. (Then again, maybe I'm too picky and slow? idk...)

    I'm talking about the plans for the K800 BTW. I can't find a lot of info on her. Seems popular, but not a lot of people seem to know details and I'm still wondering why there is no frame named "O", there's an 'N', and a 'P' but no 'O'. I think maybe i actually HATE this design now and that shouldn't even be possible. Here goes a MAJOR overhaul that I may never ever finish in my entire life. HUMPH! The 3d cad model looked cool.... Oh well... Too late now!!

    At least I'm not really going to try to build her. Who knows, maybe she goes together in a snap, but the more I look, the more I think it might be a cludgy, heavy, under canvased... nevermind, I'll stop here and look for a better plan. =0) Save my insanity for something more worth it...
     
Loading...
Forum posts represent the experience, opinion, and view of individual users. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post.
When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. Your circumstances or experience may be different.