A voyaging bear (a little sad) story with a link to some related science, another example of an overpaid education worker living high on the hog on your tax dollars, and a riff on the "Right Thing" to do...
I've been thinking a lot these days about boat design...
Well, as most folk who know me, thinking about boat design is something I do a lot anyway, but of late I have been thinking along the lines of more directed thought process rather than my general "are not boats cool and the factors that make them work interesting" musings. This sort of thinking is why I am a great student of yacht design but not very good designer myself.
The reason I've been pondering design is because I have, by accident really, been testing some formply plywood... The process is I had some molds left over from the mast project made from formply and have been using them for various purposes outside in the elements unprotected for over a year now. While not exactly a scientific test, it has taught me a few things...
One, is that this stuff holds up to repeated soaking and drying cycles in a tropical climate. Truth is, I have a couple of samples of marine ply that have suffered the same fate and not held up as well...
Second, it seems to glue together really well if you happen to give it a wipe with a bit of acetone and give it a very light sand with 120 grit sandpaper. For those who are wondering why, the formply is treated with a mold release coating that allows it to be used for concrete forms and molds (hence the name "formply"). While I have been told that the coating would stick to epoxy, it seemed to me that getting rid of the coating would be even better.
Third, this is pretty cheap stuff... Down here in the overpriced Caribbean a sheet of 3/4" form ply sells for $35... Yowza! Just my doodling but building a big sharpie out of this stuff would cut the cost of the hull and deck build by 60%... That gets my attention!
To test the stuff further I'm going to build the new prototype of the "BUFORD" self-steering gear with it. But, more about that later...
The questions I keep asking myself is do I want to build a boat with formply? If I do, what sort of boat would I build being semi-constrained by a material only available in 5/8 and 3/4 inch thickness? Would it be a sharpie, a catamaran, or just maybe a fusion of the two brought together in a proa (Michael, are you paying attention?)...
Listening to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
So it goes...
Bruce+
1 day ago
