Hi Newbie to the Board here

Hi folks Just joined and wasn't too sure where to put my first post, so i thought here would be a good start
Having been an Engineer most of my life, Yeah I'm past the better side of forty now, Iv'e now grown bored with all the swarf under my feet and years ago I worked for a small boat yard building GRP 420 and Tazer class boats and loved doing it too, till they fell on hard times and shut up shop

But I digress, I have now opted to forgo the old me in favour of something a little more Tranquil and rewarding, designing and building my own wooden boats, ( yeah OK i have a soft spot for wooden craft) maybe i've bitten off more than i can chew, but it's gonna be a whole lotta fun finding out, I'm Kinda jumping right in there as well, and if any of you guys can help me on the way then that would be brilliant.
At the moment I'm engaged in a pitch battle with Freeship, it's a steep
learning curve, but I'm getting there.

Here's what i have at the moment, I have been experimenting with a 7' Stitch&Glue Dinghy



Would love to know what you guys think and if I'm on the right track

 

Welcome to the forum.

It depends on what you're trying to do with this hull. As a row boat, she'll be a bit twitchy with all that rocker, but a skeg could help, though dragging her transom as much as shown suggests, you'll have some "tail feathers" to make your job a whole lot harder. As a sailboat, she'll have some power, but again dragging that transom will slow here considerably, so don't expect it to plane off. Lastly as a powerboat, she's well entrenched in displacement mode, as her buttocks are way too steep to ever consider getting on plane.

Simply put, hull shapes are based on a what the boat has to do, which typically is established with a comprehensive SOR. Now, with a dinghy, the SOR is usually fairly short, but you still needs goals, so the design has something to meet. With dinghies, it's usually weight as a driving force, behind many of the design choices, but a performance envelop and operating conditions environment also needs to be strongly considered.

 

Hi PAR Thanks for the reply.
Yeah she has got quite a lot of rocker, and it must show that i had it in the back of my mind about adding a sail at a later date

As i am at the moment just getting to grips with FreeShip, it's quite a challenge at the moment, and i still have a lot to learn and as such i am still at the playing around stage, I intended her to be just a row boat to start with, so yes the rocker problem will be sorted and a skeg added at some point.

I'm bound to make silly mistakes, but even they are an opportunity to learn

This is my first attempt at a boat design from scratch, so your input is much appreciated

regards Bodhiboat

 

FreeShip as well as any other application specific drawing program, will faithfully reproduce what you tell it to, regardless of how well suited to your needs it might be. It is quite literally just scalpel in the hands of a surgeon or a paste-up artist, depending on your understanding of the principles and concepts.

Though you can create very pretty pictures in FreeShip, which may or may not be what you want, unless you can comprehend the ramifications of the decisions employ during it's shapes selection.

You'd be best advised to study yacht design and hydrodynamic principles, before venturing into FreeShip. Only armed with a reasonable grasp of what shapes work for which ever purposes, can you expect reasonable successes, in developing a set of shapes, well suited to your needs.