Plug Building Divinicell Strips or Vertical pannels

I have never built a composite boat before, we have done a many stitch and glue plywood boats, but this will be the first composite boat.

Getting ready to start our first composite build and still wondering about the best/easiest way to build our plug. The study guide suggests two different methods of putting the foam in the frame.

either long strips cove and grooved run the long way the length of the form, or Vertical Panels like this:

The picture is of a larger boat than ours and there are some pretty tight radius's that seem to me like the strip method would work better. This method seems to be alot less work and fairing, but need to heat each panel to make it fit the form..

What's your opinion.
JOhn ><>

 

As you already realised, it is totally dependant on the shape. Also the ease of shaping the foam plays a role. I have only seen Core-Cell A been shaped with heat, as PVC needs more heat to shape succesfully.

Advantages of vertical:
-less seams, so less weight, less cost of glue
-less seams, so easier to get airtight (resin infusion)
-less seams, so less waste (sawdust)
-hard bilge turn made with hot foam, so relatively easy to shape
-can be fast once you get the hang of it.

Disadvantages:
-learning curve
-can be tricky to keep things fair
-fumes may develop. Not the nicest ones.

Advantages of strips:
-less of a learning curve
-easier to stay fair
-no heat, no fumes, no fire hazard
-strips can be made in bulk

Disadvantages:
-more weight
-some planning involved in hard turns (smaller strips)
-need gluing during assembly. More fiddly.

For very hard turns, you can fabricate round strips of foam, by sawing square strips, finding a short length of tube in which the square strip fits neatly. Install a router (with flat bit) on the end, so that the bit just sits on a flat on the foam. Put a screw in the other end of the foam, turn on the router, and turn the foam with a cordless drill, while pushing it through the tube. The rotation and the router will produce round foam sticks.

These sticks are very easy on very hard turns. The filling needs some extra material though...

 

The strip method bothers me in the idea that the instructions called for bead and cove. When cutting tapers and then still have to feed through the router to bead n cove.

In vertical panels I assume I can bead n cove, but the picture above it looks like they just cut a bevel and filled it with bog.

JOhn ><>

 

Vertical panels usually are not bead/coved, longitudinal strips are. I have also succesfully used lamello strips, instead of bead/cove. This saves material. As a lamello I used a piece of thin foam (1/3 of the thickness of the boat foam)