Making the Hull Sides

To make the hull sides I decided to use a bit of technology, OK a LOT of technology to create the curved shapes needed.

As the hull had already been entered into a CAD system it was an easy matter of defining a new hull in Free!ship.

Solo Hull in Free!ship

The chines were developed in Free!ship and imported into DesignCAD 2d where they were broken up to fit onto 8ft x 4ft sheets for printing and routing.

Chines set out on 8ft x 4ft sheets 

They were then printed onto cardboard using a Gerber Solara Ionx, this is a large format UV ink printer

Gerber Solara Ionx

Printing the chines onto cardboard

The finished print

The finished chines

The cardboard chines were then tested against the jig to ensure they were correct and any alterations were made to the CAD file before the plywood parts were cut.

Almost perfect fit

Just a little short

When all the modifications were finished the plywood was machined out on a large CNC router. All that was needed to do to finish the chines was to make the scarf joint to join the 2 parts together.

2M x 2.5M Router

Machining 8mm ply

The finished sheet

All this equipment is usually used to make signs but can come in very handy when building boats :)

The sort of sign we normally make!

The bow is now glued.

After a bit of trouble with a chine snapping due to a bad section where the grain went a bit funny the stem, hog and chines are now all glued together. The white marks are from the polyurethane glue any will sand away.

Now there is a lot of shaping needed before the plywood hull plates can be fitted. 

Spring is here...just!

It's been a bit too cold to do any work in the dinghy this winter but now the weather seems to be turning I've started work again.
The jig is finished and the ply bulkhead has been machined ready for fitting into the jig.

I intend to build the bulkhead into the hull as its constructed instead of after the hull has been turned over, should hopefully make alignment easier and more accurate.

The bulkhead and hog are now installed in the jig, working on the Stem and Apron now so that the Bow section can be secured to allow fitting of the chines.

More coming soon...