Twin hull sternwheeled landing craft

photos

I promised photos when the hulls came here. I will attempt to post now.

Ryland

 

photos

These hulls were set in place yesterday.

Ryland

 

I'm attempting to make a vessel with modular power units, Passenger accomodations, deck equipment, etc. All plug-n-play. The Swiss Army Knife of river boats, if you will.

The vessel will be powered with a standard Ford tractor with modified wheels, attached at the aft end of the craft by the tractor's front steering, enabling articulation of the wheels. Cool thing, is............an onboard gantry can pick up this power unit, put the tires back on it, and drive it off the ramp to an onshore task, like bringing wheeled cargo aboard.
Heve you seen the cockpits on a modern tractor!!?? Looks like a nice air conditioned pilot house to me.

The very cool dirty little secret is.........a big tractor won't cost you any more than a small tractor.

Perhaps this vessel I build will be an ugly duckling, but she will work. And I see some cool laser cut mastheads in her future.

Ryland

 

Hate to tell you this; but a good flat barge will out carry, out balance and out Swiss army your catamaran boat. Your best bet is to keep center hull low where it touches water under big loads. And even barges will flip. I have flipped a couple moving loads around. Concept of paddle boat is not practical. How the heck do you maneuver it with stern and bow thrusters. If you put some weight in it then you going to need a big prop for the bollard pull to move it around. Save some money... talk to someone that knows how to make idea work and don't dream about impractical stuff like paddle wheels. It is hard enough doing it the normal way.

 

Thanks for the advice

Don't Dream!!?? They tried that with DaVinci. My long list of dreams that came true can be found at Tanstaafl.biz. Sure, I'm going to dream, experiment and create something beautiful if only to my eyes alone.

Ryland

 

I am. Dreamer too, I am rebuilding a 70 foot aluminum yacht, but I realize it has to float in real world too. Physics work only one way, I would love to some of your machine guns on my boat, except coast guard might not like it. You said there legal in 48 states.. how?

 

Browning weapons

I build Browning style belt-fed rifles in semi-auto and full automatic for those that qualify. I build devices that make the semi-autos go as fast or faster that the full auto rifles. You can own those in 48 states. Certainly my vessel will be armed, if for no other reason that so many people would be disappointed if I did otherwise.

This boat building is a whole new adventure for me. I've built aircraft and runways to operate them from but never a floating vessel.

The next step is to decide beam dimension......still wrestling with that one.

Ryland

 

So you're saying I can legally mount a automatic rifle to my boat bow in 48 states? Which are the other two states? As far as beam the wider the better, but you still have to keep weight in the middle. I would start with half the length, just a work barge thing.
If your serious about paddle wheel, why not go all out and replace them with large inflatable tires like mud tractors have, and then you can go amphibious.

 

Here's three advantages I can see that a stern wheel might have over a conventional propeller for a shoal water craft, even if all your statements are true.

1.) its shaft is above the Waterline,
2.) it is much less likely to get fouled by debris in the water, and less likely to suffer incapacitating damage if it hits something, due to its slow operating speed, and
3.) it is amenable to crude repairs, if it is damaged.

Bend the shaft or break a blade on your propeller and you are out of luck.

In some Asian countries they have something known as a 'dragon's tail' arrangement, which has the propeller shaft tube mounted on a pivot on top of the stern and comes into the water at a shallow angle. The tube has the engine attached at one end and a strike skeg on the other. The strike skeg hits the bottom first, forcing its end of the tube to bounce up, saving the propeller from damage. The boat is steering is done much the way it is done with an outboard. You can get a good look at this set up by watching the most recent RAMBO movie. (good luck in getting the Coast Guard to accept an unguarded, spinning propeller, far behind the boat it is attached to.)

I would suggest outboards, but they are designed almost exclusively for planing boats and will have propellers that are too small and have the wrong pitch (I can see a day coming when outboard manufacturers start designing their product for non planing boats).

Also, I can see room for improving paddle wheel design.

I once had an idea of mounting half pipes onto a slotted disk, with the axis of the pipes vertical, rather than horizontal. The idea being that each half pipe will pull as much water as it pushes, as the aft its travel will tend to follow the curve of the half pipe to its center, rather than breaking off in whorls.

I can envision a paddle wheel between the two hulls which is quite narrow in relation to its height. It would look more like a side wheel. I imagine a diameter of eight to twelve feet and a width of two feet or less.

 

These "Mud-Buddy" motors are sort of like a Thai dragon-tail.

http://www.mudbuddy.com/Van Longtail.htm

and they sell a pretty big prop.

For low speed but torque consider a couple of Seagull motors. They were designed to push barges.

There are diesel outboards(35hp?) I've heard are used to push barges in Thai shrimp farming biz.

Click my handle for somewhat similar pontoon/cat concept. One of the planned features would be being able to trailer to ramp, launch/assemble boat, then load the tow vehicle (1-ton pickup) onto the deck and sail away, then reverse at next landfall without leaving anything behind.

I was also thinking of parking the truck at 90 degrees so its drive wheels could power a Thai dragon tail shaft.

 

Here's one with narrow wheels. I believe the whole system is from a small truck or car. Behind the seats is a kitchen cabinet, the engine is in there. Lowdown, behind the cabinet is the automatic transmission. The white shaft goes to the differential, upon which the paddlewheels are welded to the original tire wheels. You could even carry along a spare wheel. This setup would allow you to put on one brake or the other to assist in steering, such as in a bulldozer. I've also seen a much bigger boat with much larger paddlewheels of 10-12' diameter done similar but using an old tractor that was stripped of the front wheel and steering.



Here's another setup using a Datsun. Both these solutions give you forward and reverse. This guy told me he got about 6 miles a gallon. He would cruise in one gear, when he came to docking and such he would not lower the rpm but would just downshift. The second photo is the same boat.

 

To be clear, my belt fed semi-automatic Brownings can be legally owned in 48 states. Mounting them on a vessel has no legal implications, however operating any rifle over open water may be greatly regulated and restricted in many states. Having said that, in international waters any self-respecting pirate with a pair of binoculars will, upon seeing a vessel with a deck gun will likely choose a softer target.

I would be delighted to send such a rifle to a dealer in your area for inspection, testing, etc. Please advise.


I am serious about paddle wheels. I think I can increase the effeciency by thirty percent bu including cyclic pitch in the design. I can only wonder if this has been done before. No data presents evidence of such.

Ryland

 

Are you meaning articulated paddle wheels like

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/propulsion/do-they-exist-articulating-paddle-wheel-19475.html

?

I would be surprised if anything extra performance could be extracted from paddlewheel design after all the years of engineeering, unless new materials made a difference.

 

What about cyclic pitch not dissimilar to the action of a helicopter blade. Certainly there is an optimum angle of attack for a blade in the water, which can be optimized by cyclic pitch control. I'm just pulling a 33 percent improvement factor out of the air out of ignorance, but the little voices in my head tell me I'm not far off-base. I see also depth control of the paddles a factor, too.

Thank-you guys for humoring a newbie and (somewhat) ignoring my ignorance. I must announce a selfish interest here which is being satisfied.

Anyway, thanks.

Ryland

 

Some people have way too much time on their hands...