A good evening in the garage.

Female mould set up and the hull in place. Strips for the next hull half and the bulkheads ripped, and I even got to clean out and organize a lot of stuff in my workroom.


Tomorrow evening I hope to fill a few cracks where I was a bit overeager with the block plane when fitting strips and do a coat of epoxy. Then it is sanding with a rubber backing plate on the drill on wednesday and perhaps glassing. If the epoxy isn't quite there yet, we will begin stripping the next hull half.

Frode continued with the bulkheads after setting up the female mould for inside glassing. He have really began to produce those with some speed and precision!


We set up a couple of worklights over the mould last week. Under the 500W light the hull have distorted a bit. Looks like the wood have dried out and twisted a bit. I put on a moist towel tonight in the hope that it adding some moisture will fix it. If not, I'll put on some lead weights when filling tomorrow night.




Here is the simple jig Frode have made to route the insets for the different parts of the bulkheads.

Not just F16 building.

Rolf is not only working on the cats, he also have a kayak to work on. Tonight he put on the deck on a plywood hard chine kayak. Hopefully it is ready to go out of the workshop monday night! All that is left to do before it can go out for outside storage is putting epoxy on the topside of the decks. His wife have approved storage of the kayaks under the roof of the porch if they are hoisted up to the rafters. Will do!

7.7 is the number..

First hull half came off the mould at 7.7Kgs. We still have to add glass on the inside, but that should not be more than a couple of Kg. Target weight for a hull is 24Kgs, so we have to be careful with what we put into the hulls!

First hull half comes off tomorrow!

Just finished putting on the second coating of epoxy on the glass, the filler coating. Tomorrow the first hull half comes off the mould so we finally get some weights and find out how we are doing. Exciting times!

It's glassed

No updates for a while on the bulding, but we have not been idle. Tonight we finished glassing the hull half, and glued some parts of the bulkheads together.


We put on the glass at +-45deg to the planks. It does mean that we have an overlap on the glass between sheets, but it should give more strength and stiffness. Pretty interesting stuff, just hope the sanding will not be too bad.



Also a boon to be able to put on the glass in several small operations instead of one large. I hope to have time for layer two of epoxy tomorrow night, and then it comes off on wednesday for inside sanding and glassing. Perhaps we are able to put the hull on some scales and get a rough weight estimate. Inquiring minds all over the catsailing world wants to know..











5mm strips glued together to form the basis for bulkheads. We will use a router later on to shape them to their respetive stations in the hull. Should be a really lightweight replacement for full plywood bulkheads.

Multihull article

Article about our project in a norwegian sail magazine. To read click here.

Sanding, and a pre-coat

Friday I was down in the basement filling a few dents and low spots with thickened epoxy. For thickening I used fine dust from all the sanding we have done. Today I had the pleasure of sanding down the hardened epoxy. Some cunning work with the belt sander saved considerable time, but it is risky business! I worked a lot with a belt sander when I did the Quattro 16 catamaran, so I have a feel for it, but it removes a lot of material really fast! After some longboarding I went over the hull with a random orbital sander with 120grit paper for some minutes to remove the scratches from the 40 grit paper on the longboard. Well, it says 40 grit on the paper but it feels more like 60 grit to me. Frode found a bargain on sandpaper in a shop, and it does the job.
After sanding and cleaning the hull half, we applied a pre-coat of epoxy. The idea is to apply a very thin layer of epoxy to the hull and let it soak in before the glass is put on. That way the wood will soak up less epoxy when putting the glass on, saving considerable weight. We used a new hardener for the pre-coat. This hardener results in a thicker epoxy , so it will not penetrate so deep into the wood. At least that was our theory, we are very, very, excited to check out the results tomorrow! Either it worked well, or we have a large sanding job on our hands..

Today Frode worked mostly on the female mould where we will put the hull half for inside glassing. Things are going forward, and we will only become faster with more experience. E.g. today we found out that you fill all lows first, then sand the hull to shape. Saves you from sanding one extra time to sand down the filler.

I also did some photos with a decent camera today, as compared to the mobile phone cameras we ordinarily uses. Phill, the designer, wanted to see what was up to in somewhat more detail. Feedback was "furniture", which was great to hear, but we know where the faults are :-D

First hull half sanded to shape..

No updates for a few days now, but we have been chugging away on it. First hull half is now sanded down to shape and Frode have produced lots of bulkheads.
Sanding was no quick affair, but we expect to improve. Breaking out the beltsander was a good move, tought we were hesitant at first to do so. The hull half now need a little thickened epoxy in the holes and dimples left by the staples and we'll fill a few low spots. Then a quick sanding with 80 grit on the longboard and 120grit for a few minutes and we are ready to glass! Hopefully I find time for this during the weekend so we can start a new hull half next week. Those slow days are gone now!

W V D

Not much getting done this week. The W. V. D has hit us..

Number one..

Still a lot to do before it is a hull half, but the first half is planked. Planking is way esier to do than anticipated. The work with strip planking is obviously setting up for it. Stripping is just zen.

Planking the first hull half

It was our first planking session in earnest but with a respectable result in our opinion. Next hull will be even better!
Tapering the strips to a tight fit was a bit slow, so another of Bjørn Thomassons techniques will be tried there. Using a thin bladed japanese saw to saw the strips to shape. Then sand some if needed. Just need to track down such a saw in our little town..
We had some trouble shaping the bottom of the bow area, but the next one will be better. Then we will taper the bottom strip well before it is put in place. doing so with the rest of the bottom strips as well should make this heavily curved section easier to plank.
Using a plane to make tight fit between planks in the bottom was surprisingly fast and easy.

Frode also put some time into doing an experimental bulkhead. We are not sure tought.. Opinions anyone? There will also be some strips going across like an X over the bulkhead.

A well spent evening.

We got the wide strips for the hull sides ripped, set up the bow and secured no less than four strips. That is real progress!




We are becoming experts at ripping strips with the skilsaw. Fast and easy. Next time we will have to do some hard decisions and start beveling the edges of the strips going into the bottom section.

We will have to re-check bulkhead 300 with Phill. Is it supposed to go in at position 300 and is the bow supposed to be hollow?

With the current setup the bow will be hollow, and I have a hard time trying to imagine Phill designing it like that.. Hopefully we will know before wednesday, when we begin stripping in earnest.

Back on track!

There has been much debate and even indications of controversy over wether to rip strips on a table saw or with a handheld saw. I have been pretty confident that we wanted to use a handheld, while all professional woodworkers and people at the lumberyards have insisted on table saws. Now we finally know..






Last night we ripped three 8 inch planks into strips. We did not count them, but in the end we had rather many strips. Using the handheld saw, we had some ruined strips last time we tried, but this time we found the trick. Using the right techniques ripping strips was straight forward and an easy feat. The key was to focus on the guide and watch it so it did not work out from the plank.




Then it was just a question of pushing the saw forward. In the end, we controlled the saw 80% with the hand on the guide and 20% actually on the saw. If we pushed too hard, we got too much friction and made it harder for ourself. Bjørn Thomasson in Sweden was right all the time. A table saw is not neccesary.

Another key element for us was having a helper to catch the strip when cut off the plank.


These planks were quite wide and thing, for the bottom with lots of curve. One problem with wide planks is the natural sideways curve they will have. You will have to decide how to use the handheld saw when cutting the strips, to make the cut straight.
Next time we will rip some 2inch planks for the sides.






Using the NBC mask for protection was great. No dust in the nose, throat, lungs or eyes. Definately reccomended but perhaps not worth being drafted for

Ripping..

We are finally ripping some wood. We had just two hours due to family comittments, but got to do an extension to the table for ripping and rip some strips. Using a circle saw demands a certain technique so we did produce some unusable strips in addition to the well shaped ones. We will only get better.. And you bet we are careful about where we put our fingers while using the saw!



As you can see from the pictures, some of us dont like dust and at least try to take care of their hearing. While others prefer "no-cost" duskmasks and the higher volume range on their stereos. ;-)
Yes, the mask Rolf is wearing is standard military issue. It supposedly protects against chemical, biological and nuclear warfare so epoxy dust, vapours and wood dust should be no match. Thanks to the norwegian national guard for sponsoring at least some useful gear.

Spruce, meet Mr. DeWalt

After a few false starts we have learnt a lesson on tool quality. Cheap circular saws are cheap for a reason.. A blade 0.5mm off axis will over a 4000mm run mess up a 5mm plank. That is where Mr. DeWalt enters the stage.. In the basement, ready for some heavy duty runs once christmas eve is over (we celebrate christmas eve in Norway, not christimas day)

Done setting up stations, we hope.

Here Frode is clearly realising that we are getting good at this. At least we hope we are getting good at it. It looks fair, and we hope the end result will be fair as well. Next time we will be able to do this a heck of a lot faster! Next time we will be much more careful when we mark and cut the stations as well. One millimeter here and one there can spell trouble. CNC cut stations would be fantastic to work with!





Now all stations are up, except station 5 and 30. They should be quick work next building session. We have experimented a bit with handheld circlesaws for ripping the strips. So far the two cheap chineese saws we tested have not been straight. Even a 1mm offset between the frame and the blade spells disaster when ripping. We are now trying to borrow a decent saw so we can rip some strips next week. If we can't get a good saw, we will have to fall back on a table saw. We might have to do so anyway if we dont master the technique, but if first time kayak builders manage..

Aligning stations.

A fickly job which takes lots of time. 5mm her and 2mm there, or you get a "not so good looking" hull. Wonder how much we can take of this before we begin putting planks on.. Tonight we got some new lessons in the art of aligning stations. We quit when we started suspecting that our fairing batten was unfair. At least it felt unfair to us (pun intended).
An australia sailor claimed that strip planking was the devils building method. I begin to wonder if he had a point after all..

New stapler gun

Just had to try the new stapler. It seems to do the job attaching strip plank to the frame. Rolf also received the new saw blade at last, so we can start cutting planks into the desired thickness. We also managed to attach profiles to the work bench. Now, everything looks bright for the future. Knock on wood!

Generating traffic

Happy to see that so many of you, from all over the world, find this page. We will try to describe how we build three 16 foot catamarans. Perhaps this will motivate others to build as well? Remember to bookmark this page and come back often. Site will be updated on a regular base and perhaps evolve into a good resource for all who wants to build or sail a Formula 16 catamaran.
Enjoy!

Getting stuff done..

At last some progress. We now have all stations cut and faired, including a notch for the gunwhale. We even got the stations set up roughly and put on a strip. Looks quite fair even without fiddling with the stations. Hopefully most stations will fit right in.
Today we also plotted the station missing from the full size plans Phill supplied. X-Y coordinates and fairing the station afterwards takes time. Note to self: Never start building from a table of offsets, if time is a concern!
To get some more progress and get to the fun part, stripping, we are going to do two sessions a week, for some time. Next time, we will set up the stations properly, and hopefully be ready to put on the first strips next week (just need to cut them first. Two weeks soon, since the sawblade was ordered, and it's still in the mail)!

We began talking about the schedule today, and we migh look at getting some ply for the decks, just to save time from strip planking the decks. Something to concider..

More work on the table, stations etc.

Last wednesday we put feet on the bulding table and leveled it, did some tuning on the stations and other small things that need to be done but which dont show up.
We have still not got the ripping blade for our saw, now over a week since it was ordered! The tracking number claim the parcel is in Molde, so there is hope tough.

Omar showed up with some pretty fancy gear. He even had a "quick draw" holster for his battery powered screwdriver!








Frode, and our snuffer MK-1. Jesus we have come a long way since those days!








Nothing sailing related, but Omar found a set of old standard issue sunglasses for winter/mountain use in my workroom. Since he had to try them on, I had to put the picture of him on the internet..


As you understand, there's not much cool to show from last weeks building session. We had progress, but shooting these photos was the most fun part.

Ripping plywood and cleaning up..

This wednesday was lost to other activites. We cleared out no less than six sacks of firewood from leftovers and fitted decks to a kayak. This kayak is a ply kayak, done in construction grade ply. When putting on the foredeck, which have quite some curve, the ply actually ripped apart from the load! Must have been a bad spot in the ply, at least I hope so. I will definately put a layer of glass on the deck!
Next week we will rip materials for at least one boat. A saw blade for ripping is on order (not much to choose from locally).

Flashback

It´s Halloween and I´m in the garage working on the profiles. Trying to get them as smooth and even as possible. My mind wanders off to when I was a kid at school attending woodwork class, making birds feeding stations and other fantastic constructions. Rolf is back from America tomorrow;)

Lumberyard excursion

Rolf gave us, (Frode and Omar) a long list of tasks to finish in his absence. He is over the Pond participating in a job related course. So far progress has been slow, we must admit, but yesterday was a productive day. We went to the lumberyard and found some timber suitable for strips.

The saw issue has to be on the agenda again tough. Should we use a circle saw, or should we use our table saw? Anyone with experience out there? Those we spoked to yesterday about this, had the opinion that we should use the table saw for this job, as it would be easier to cut long lengths and get the right thickness. We might have to run some tests since we need a lot of strips.

The missing link, profile number 160, will be cut on wednesday. And not to many burgers now Rolf!

Night #3, done cutting stations and ready to set up

Tonight we cut the remaining stations and made ready to set them up. We could not help ourself but had to set up the stations at their position to have a look at the lines.. Beautiful hull shape!
While the stations was up in a very rudimentary way (they will be set up permanently and aligned later) we ran a fairing batten along the stations. Looked very fair to our untrained eyes. One of the front stations were obviously not good enough and will have to be replaced, but the rest of the stations looked like the real thing.

Hmmm, isn't something missing here? Should there not be a station at 160cm? I bet there should, so I'll have to have a talk with the designer about that. :-)

The rest of the evening we began fitting the deck to a kayak we need to get out of the garage.
For the next two weeks I'll be away, but I hope Frode and Omar will rip the planks. Fair the stations and set them up. Then we will be ready to start stripping once I return.

Second night, cutting stations and other preparations.

There sure is a lot more work in setting up a strip operation than doing a stitch and glue build. In two nights we have a strongback done and have cut most of the mould stations. If we had found good ply we could have the panels done by now and started bending them into something resembling hulls.
Next evening we will be able to finish cutting stations and start setting them up on the strongback. It will be very interesting to see how the lines of the hull come to life.


I guess this is how a Blade F-16 would look like if it hit something substantial at speed ;-) Still a few stations to cut.

We are now 6 hours into the project, but cost is low as we have used scraps and remains from other projects so far.

Here are the supports for the mould stations. 26 supports at 40cm length, or was it 40 supports at 40cm? Well, at least Frode cut enough of them while he was going at it.

In the background there are two pieces of ply which will go on as the deck of a ply kayak I am finishing at the same time. Need to get the kayak out of the garage fast so I hope to install the deck this week. Ply is norwegian fir 3.6mm thick and not of marine quality, but for a kayak which will only see light use it is OK.

First night, building the strongback and transferring stations

This was not really the first night as Omar and I cleaned out my garage the week before. But this was the first evening we did something which felt like making progress.

To the left we can see Frode inspecting the strongback which is half done. The strongback is built from 12mm ply skins and 2x4 lumber, assembled with 80mm giproc screws.
In the background we can see a Tornado rudder and the door leading to my hobby room.



Omar is transferring the stations to a 20mm particle board. The board was "liberated" when they threw out some desks from my workplace. We got a stack of these ready to be turned into stations.



Omar is very dedicated to his task, to the expense of our sense of aesthetics.. We can live with this as long as he do good stuff.