The multihull sailor and philosopher Mark Evans used to remark that spiders will move into epoxy boats immediately, but never onto polyester boats.
I’m building the spaceship like a boat, with epoxy. This large alpha arachnid in the lunar lander was warning me to back off. It was his house now. There must be human health implications.
I see Derek Kelsall has sent out a mass emailing, inviting me to his workshop. I got two of them, I guess in case I missed it. Says he will increase my understanding. I do understand it. I had forgotten that I had been doing CM about a decade before KSS started and its pretty similar to CM but with bits cut out of the bilge.
The trick as I see it is to start with curved panels; instead of bending flat panels into a curve. The other trick is to resolve the compression along the keel. That way you don’t have to cut bits and then laminate over the cut bits, and next fair that work. I think I sorted that compression out and will build one that way as soon as I get this spaceship done.
I hope I’m still working the problems like Derek is when I get to his age.
A crew on the 55′ daycharter cat Palmetto Breeze sent a picture of the T shirts they sell there. nice.
http://aqua-safaris.com/discover/charleston/palmetto-breeze/
Chris came through. The previously mentioned cat was actually named Jimmy, it was actually 60′, and the shape was not a tetrahedron but a flattened pyramid, as I forgot that I described it as correctly, years ago.
Back when I was wowing about a $100,000 design fee for a 52′ cat, the fellow who calls himself Ocean Cruiser correctly noted that if I were famous I could get those fees. Since I’m not, deal with it. He is right. And its not the first time I have been put in my place, or replaced by the famous designers.
It was back in the end of ’91 that I got a commission to design a 61′ trimaran. It had all the makings of being amazing. It was the first design that I had done in 3D CADD. It had complicated organic NURB surfaces that needed to be trimmed to each other in 3D to understand how they worked. Nobody was doing that back then. Paul Steinart, Phd did the FEA work. Reichard helped with laminates. It was going to be amazing. It would be light and quick, with only twin outboard power. But the builders convinced the owner that I was a nobody, and if the project was to get the fame it needed, he needed a famous designer. I hear it might have happened again. Maybe some Alastra fame effect.
About the same time I did schematic design on a 40’something cat with undstayed mast. I proposed that it have no main beam, but that the cabin slope 4 ways down like a tetrahedron to the decks. It seemed to work. I recall the owner was so nice and was from far away. When Ricco visited, he told me he liked the design, but he needed a famous designer. He hired Nigel. I was pleased to later see that it was built, in NZ as I recall, exactly like I proposed it. I have not found pictures of it yet. It had a name like Joseph or something, and was painted purple or chartruse or something.
My point is I understand the fame thing and agree that I just have to keep working and live without it. No fame here. Never will be. Just working the problems.
I see that my 53/57 cruising catamaran now in the South Pacific, the Lil Explorers, has trashed a rudder. I understand they have done a repair by now. It looks in the picture like it absorbed a lot of kinetic energy. Note to future self. Keep the board down deeper than the rudder at all times. Its much easier to fix.
That was a 3″ OD shaft with .75″ wall on the plans. It moved. You wonder why I shake my head at those other designers who think 1/8″ wall is fine? My boats are designed to dry out on a tide flat with no rudder damage.
Nobody should build a boat outdoors. Do what I say, not what I do, or have done.
As in the picture, and its not really a boat, just built like one, notice the bog is dark. I use the slowest hardner in hot weather, but add graphite powder to make it dark grey or even black. That enhances a solar cure so I can be sure it will be sandable the next day. That also helps on cold days with a heat lamp.
Notice how the bog bits get darker as I get closer to completion.
I just finished modeling the new SD31 tri with composite beams for customer on east coast of US. Very simple cruising tri, all of CM ply/epoxy for rapid build. Beams are plywood with some carbon.
It is demountable.
Back at the 1986 Marine Applications of Composites conference in Melbourne, FL, the chairman, Ron Reichard took some of us on an after-hours tour of the materials testing lab.
The most visually informative samples that he had were a series of cored panels of about 2′ by 2′ dimension. They all had the same laminate; probably two layers of 34 oz triaxial each face. They all had the same thickness of core, 1″ as I recall.
Each of these had a bowling ball dropped onto it from maybe 18 feet?
The balsa one was made of contour core squares and had the little squares blasted out the far side of the panel. The impact side was destroyed.
The crosslinked PVC one (Divinycel) had its core sheared apart but the face skins were mostly intact.
The linear PVC (Airex, and later would be like Corecel) had a slight delamination in a small impact spot, only on the impact face.
For me that was a powerful visual comparison. As Prof. Thiel used to tell us, “Compare simultaneous alternatives.”
As designer, I liked the previous one better. And they sailing reefed when sailing at all. Guess they have to use the big Cat engines more. USCG certified for 100 passengers as I recall.
http://youtu.be/FcxD_4hzLVQ?list=UUjigikzWFcXr1OQWsg7vqqQ