Budgeting the Build of a 35' steel sailboat; worthwhile costs vs. extravagance

...in all aspects of boatbuilding, the poor man pays twice......

If you cannot afford a decent welder (either machine or person), well you really should just go play tiddlywinks instead of boatbuilding.

 

And the relevance of this to using an old industrial AC stick welder is....... ?

Also as a generalisation it's total crap. See my recent comments on Edson steering gear as a classic example. So far I've got less than a couple days work into it and it's nearly finished. For the asking price which a rich man could pay, I could have bought my lathe, milling machine, all the tooling, all the materials to make the steering gear and STILL come in under that price. When I'd finished I'd still have the tooling for the next project.

PDW

 

"And the relevance of this to using an old industrial AC stick welder is....... ?"...nothing, who said it was......


"it's total crap"....well, so you say, I beg to differ. The expression I quoted means that the fellow the tries to save money by buying cheap, will eventually have to pay again for the parts/tools that he purchased....as they will fail in a short time.......i say again, it is better to buy better quality the first time around, instead of buying twice. Quality items often have very good resale prices, poor quality is even hard to sell second hand.

...the poor man pays twice DOES NOT reflect on poor people (unwealthy)...it reflects on all purchases made...

 

Hi All,

I have read this thread and found it VERY helpful... I hope it continues.

Would more of you share your thoughts as to the purchase of precut/nested parts? I understand the benefits of doing it all yourself - a builder clearly has more control and may make up for slight errors or changes, but if you are pretty well on the ball at set-up is the ratio for success high? are the fit tolerances generally acceptable? Pre-cut parts would certainly save some materials due to the fact that the nesting is maximized by computer. I am fascinated with the Dix 43 pilot and have generally heard a thumbs up to Dixs' plans/support efforts.

A few of you have already helped us... (thank you!) for those that don't know our story you can learn more about our quest on the post "Requesting start-up information" the post is on the same metal boat building page as this "Budgeting the Build..." thread.

By posting here I feel I am setting myself up for some 'amateur' bashing but I guess that may be part of the pre-build/feasibility study gauntlet. I am what I am!

Thank you in advance,

Jay

 

Dix 43

Jay if your serious about the Dix 43 PH then check out this link, Brian is building the aluminum Dix 43 from cut kit. He may be able to get you some info on a steel kit
http://www.odysseyyachts.com/Odyssey_Yachts/Odyssey.html
Tom

 

Wiley. How did you make out in the Aussie floods and Hurricanes?
Good post. Its hard to get a buzzbox 6011 weld to break before the metal alongside it. A buzzbox is all anyone needs for a one off. There is zero benefit in buying anything more expensive.
6011 is a rod made for AC, 6010 for DC. I believe what you have is 6011, expressed in metric.

I recently saw a "professionally " built Beneteau hauled out . She had 28 white plastic delrin through hulls on he,r 80% of them below the waterline, any one of which can be easly kicked out, with little effort.
UV makes them keep getting more brittle over time. A friend nearly sunk her "professionaly built" stock fibreglas boat that way last sumer. They have long been standard practise on commercialy built plastic boats. A conscientious amateur would have used metal thru hulls.
Hiscock had his steel boat profesionaly built by the Dutch. She had plywood bolted over her decks, then teak over that, as well as a lot of wood trim over the steel ,the biggest maintenance mistakes one can make. She had a lot of hull filler on her, to hide the distortion. She had only tiny zincs, bolted on.
Had she been done properly , Hiscock would have become a great spokesman for steel. Instead, the opposite was the case, thanks to the Dutch "professionals" who built her.
Steel weld failures on amateur built steel boats are extremely rare. If you grind out the slag before putting the second pass on, it's extremely hard to get incusion of slag which is not there.To get a bad weld , you really have to work on it.
Vancouver marine surveyor Paul Dupre , bought the most horrendous example of abysmaly poor steel work imaginable, for the gear on it, a boat called "Waskazoo." After stripping the goodies off it, he tried to break it up with a back hoe. After 8 hours of banging on it with the backhoe, he couldn't get a single weld to break. Only a cutting torch could reduce it.
Welders grossly over rate their importance, and what they do. .

 

You wouldn't really expect to break it up with an excavator would you?

And I strongly disagree with you, welding skill is very important.

There are many low stressed welds on a small steel vessel. But there are also critical welds in high stress areas which don't tolerate poor welding if the vessel is really put through its design loadings.

I think it's important to consider that design loads for an offshore vessel are considerably higher than most boats will see even once over a lifetime in sheltered operations.
I've seen several split welds in hull plating and they can let go with a bang when there's a lot of residual stress present. The steel USCG registered Roberts 53 that broke it's rudder skeg in heavy weather and sank is a good example. Had the welding been up to standard its unlikely that would have failed.

 

I think it should be clariified what the meaning of a buz box welder is. to me it would be a 200 amp min Ac that runs on 220 volt not a 110 volt Harbor freight peice of junk ? Allthough I have have used a 110 volt jobber in a pinch to get me home.

Mike Johns
On the skeg of say a Roberts design for all up strength would we be better off slotting the hull and running the skeg up in side the hull with webbing connected and capped ?

Tom

 

No, Brent, as usual, you're incorrect. 6011 can be used on DCEP(reverse polarity), as well as AC. Maybe you should stick to something you know.

 

Right on on both points

 

It would have broken up any non metal boat quickly.

Had the skeg been properly engineered, as Tom suggested, the weld would have been far less relevant, and would have never broke.

 

Hi Tom, sorry I missed this .

Yes with keels too it's really better to run the keel plate up inside past the garboard/lower hull plating and fillet weld both sdes if possible. That adds a lot of redundancy . Just offering the fin up to the plate requires a very good fit and a good weld and usually thicker hull plate by way of the skeg/keel.

With extreme fins it's better to take them well inside and get the max bending moment away from the hull keel join.

You can attach skegs reliably direct to hull plate providing they are designed and built properly. Other designers have done this reliably for many decades. It's all down to the factor of safety in the weld stress, for example a longer of wider skeg has a lower connection stress than a short narrow skeg.

 

Thanks Mike
That does make more sense to do it that way, with a little luck in the worse case stenerio it would fold over rather than tear a hole in the hull.
Tom

 

No problems with floods & cyclones, I'm a long way away from them. Still waiting for sea level rise so I can launch from the bottom of my yard though. I suspect it'll be a real long wait so I have a plan B.

Yeah E4111 is the same as E6011. Funnily enough they're now E4311, haven't bothered to read what the difference is.

Just out of curiosity I did a 2 pass weld in 4mm hull plate scrap using 2.5mm E4311 rods, one pass each side, slight double V prep. Didn't back-grind when I flipped it over, just welded. I then cut the scrap across the weld in 4 different places looking for slag inclusions. There weren't any. The black paper soot from the cellulose flux burns out. I don't recommend this as acceptable technique, but it matches my prior use of cellulose flux rods.

I broke down and bought a good MIG. I didn't need it but I like metalworking toys and it's a hell of a lot easier to tack with one hand using the MIG. Ditto welding in tight spaces. I'm using the MIG for all my hull plate welding because it's faster and easier, not because I have to. And I am grinding back the butts before the 2nd pass. I expect do do quite a lot of stainless to A36 plate welding and while I've a lot of E309, 308 and 316L rods I'd rather use the MIG with the proper shielding gas.

PDW

 

Yes, that's what I meant. Lots available used on Ebay and the like. Mine is nearly 50 years old, 250A output at 60% duty cycle. Worth maybe $200 at most.

When I bought a MIG I was most careful to look at the duty rating as there are a lot advertised as 250A MIG units. Suuure, at 10% duty cycle.

PDW