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.

Blade F-16 strip plank project.

We are building three Blade F-16 catamarans in norwegian spruce with strip plank technique. The Blade is a Phill Brander design and has been the "rage" in the F-16 class the later years.
We are building in strip plank with local materials becouse we could not source good okume marine plywood at a reasonable price. We also think building in strip will result in a stiffer and potentially lighter boat than the same boat done in ply.
Project is a cooperation between three persons, Omar Sejnæs, Frode Nerland and myself (Rolf Nilsen). We are doing this on a very low budget, so sourcing affordable parts is a big part of the project. We have currently sourced two Tornado rigs which will be cut down to F-16 size. We also plan on building our own trampolines and sails. Fittings and lines will be sourced at the best possible prices and imported by ourselves. Building materials and glass will be bought directly from industrial providers where we have made contacts.
We plan to document the building process and eventual other projects in this blog. Current goal is to have the hulls done ready for painting and final fitting out in the spring. This dont leave us with much time to spare, but we will do our best to document the process.