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!