Week One

First you take a drawing...

My buddy Brian, who is a DBA extraordinaire in real life, is also an amateur boat builder and has been 'learning CAD/CAM/CNC'.  He offered to take the files for the Skoota and scale them down to our desired 53%.  Yes, I know... What a pain in the butt...
Anyway, Brian not only scaled the drawings, but also printed them out on his flatbed CNC machine.  He didn't have the router working yet (darn) but even printing the bulkhead templates was a big help.
Brian being very meticulous
We put two sheets of 6mm plywood together, attached the templates, and cut them out - mostly freehand Skilsaw. 
The design is pretty asymmetrical, and we've been very careful to keep the bulkheads together so that anything we do for the starboard hull, we also set up for port. 
We were careful as well to ensure that our 'anchor screws were precisely aligned at the waterline and a lower reference line.  This line was our scribe line to be used later to align with the top of the strongback.

Finished bulkheads lining the wall.
This is also the time of a million little tasks - going to the yard for plywood, setting up the strongback, putting lights in the workspace, designing the deck, and a LOT of thinking about how the various bits go together.  We aren't building a traditional boat with a 9.9HP Merc 4-stroke and a 2.5 gallon gas can.  This is an electric with a 100AH 48 volt battery that needs to be locked down, secured and protected.  And kept dry - water and electricity just don't mix.  And more thinking about how to replace our current trailer that puts all the weight on two points on each hull. 
And you have to think a lot about how to reinforce the deck without getting so carried away that it weighs 500lb!
Lots of thinking...

Laying out the deck frame template

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Launching the Skoota 16

Assembling the bits

Elves...