Corecell Planking Doubt

Years ago I got to tour Hobie Alter's R&D shop when he was making several different hulls when he was doing the preliminary design work for his Hobie 33. He used foam strip planking and tied the foam planks to the molds with strands of fiberglass. After glassing the outside of the hull, he cut the fiberglass strands and lifted the hull off the mold. It seemed to work well and there was no worry about nails or filling holes or even guing the edges of the planks together.

 

Dear Chuck losness if you tie the strips of foam with fiberglass stands as you say, you will not be able to sand the foam strips to fair the foam before glassing. After thinking a lot about it ( and searching the web) I now believe the only way is to use some wood battens on top of the forms and then screw the foam from the inside trough the battens with small screws that do not protrude in to the outer face of the foam strips.
But on the other hand, I have seen pictures of boats being constructed with corecell in which can be clearly seen that there must be a way to do it without the battens because in some pictures can be seen that there are no battens, just nails and thin square pieces of thin cardboard acting as washers nailed directly to the forms without any battens .... so the mystery remains unsolved for me

 

Those guys surely know they are form Dixon Boatworks in south carolina but I am afraid to ask since they do this for a living and may want to keep their techniques for themselves

 

those guys as can be seen in the nicely faired hull which is upside down, in order to be able to fair the foam must somehow had removed the nails first and then after fairing was complete, proceed to the glassing but how ???¿¿¿

 

Jiggerpro, I understand what you are saying about fairing the foam but Hobie simply tied the foam to the mold and glassed over it. He described the process to me. I saw the molds with the foam tied to it and the hull was very fair. Hobie was a true master with foam and fiberglass. It's been a long time but my recollection was that the fiberglass strands were imbedded into the foam which would still allow the foam to be faired. This was just a suggestion. Use it or dismiss it as you see fit.

 

The pict clearly shows drywall screws with thin plywood plates under them. This a derrivative of what I posted earlier.

Once the resin that holds the foam strips has cured, the shape is stable. If you are forcing the foam into a tight bend, soften it up with a heat gun. There is no reason to keep all the screws after the resin has set.

It appears that foam cores get little to know fairing. They get roughly shaped and then glassed. The fairing gets done afterwards.

 

Thank you Chuck and Nero I feel more reassured now that I am sure that you have understood my doubts, the place where I will start the build is being built at the moment and I will surely start a thread where I will keep the Boat design community entertained for a while, meanwhile very probably I will ask for some more advice about specific points where I feel unsecure, "the thing" will be a 32 feet relatively flared bow with a " soft" broken sheer line and 22 degree deadrise non stepped bottom hopefully powered by twin zukes 300 (or 400 if they exist by then) made in relatively high density corecell/epoxy thats the idea for now I have posted some earlier design renderings in another thread in this same forum.

The thing will also have a quite unusually big and long console allowing a rest ( and who knows what more it would allow jejeje )