easy frameless dinghy plans?

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by drspastic, Oct 26, 2016.

  1. drspastic
    Joined: Oct 2016
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    Location: bulgaria

    drspastic New Member

    Hi everyone, this is my first time here so sorry if I'm posting in the wrong forum.

    I have owned a few small cruisers in UK in the past and self taught to sail so my expertise is limited. Now I live in Bulgaria right near the Danube river and want to get afloat again to visit the islands nearby.
    The budget is too tight to buy a craft and they are not cheap or easy to find either, so I decided to build my first boat! my chosen material is steel because it is cheap here in 1mx2m sheets ($10 a sheet for 1mm) and I have a tig welder and skills to use it, and it has a built in plasma cutter :D.
    There is also a video projector on my laptop that has been used before to scale and copy plans direct to materials, which saves a lot of time.:idea:

    There are many diy boats here built with plated frames and are very heavy, so I am looking to a frameless design like the origami boats, possibly to come apart in 2 pieces for ease of loading and unloading to the truck single handed.

    It should be 3 or 4 metres long and take a small sail, but I would even consider a 2m craft just to test the theory. If all goes well the next project could be a small cruiser.

    So what suggestions to you all have for noob here? Are there any free/open source plans for such a craft, or something bigger that can be scaled down?
    Is 1mm too thin? I am happy tigging that all day long, and figure with careful use it will be ok, but 1.5mm is also ok although price and weight will increase pro-rata :(.

    Thanks in advance for any help you can give!
     
  2. drspastic
    Joined: Oct 2016
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    Location: bulgaria

    drspastic New Member

  3. Richard Woods
    Joined: Jun 2006
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    Location: Back full time in the UK

    Richard Woods Woods Designs

  4. drspastic
    Joined: Oct 2016
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    Location: bulgaria

    drspastic New Member

    Thanks, they look lovely boats but I am more at home working with steel than wood. Its also hard to get stuff like marine ply here, its all sterling board or pine beams in the merchants.

    If stiffness is an issue I can always put a layer of expanding foam on the inside and press on a hardboard topping to laminate it. That method proved really strong when rebuilding a campervan whose frame had rotted away and had to be stripped to the thin ali skin. that was .80mm ali and after the foam sandwich and pre-stressing to a nice bow it was good to stand on even in the middle of the roof.

    All I need really are some cutting templates such as those found online below, and they can be adapted with a bit of skill. On making up these models from paper they were not quite the shape hoped for.
     

    Attached Files:

  5. drspastic
    Joined: Oct 2016
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    Location: bulgaria

    drspastic New Member

    well i will try and do the second one from thing galvanised roofing steel as a model/bait boat as a test and see if it looks better. its 0.5mm so i will just do half metre long to test how it looks tacked together. if its ok then i will scale it up and chop it in two.
     
  6. mydauphin
    Joined: Apr 2007
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    Location: Florida

    mydauphin Senior Member

    Steel would not be my choice for a small light boat.
     

  7. Petros
    Joined: Oct 2007
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    Location: Arlington, WA-USA

    Petros Senior Member

    steel that thin would need several frames to hold the shape, and reinfoced gunwales. adding weight and cost.

    It might be possible to get thinner metal and use fasteners to build up volumes inside the hull that would add both flotation and add stiffness like they do on aluminum fishing or row boats.

    good luck
     
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