your target weight?

Posted by Howard on Mar 1, 2005

Kyle,

Just curious what your target/goal weight is? I was looking at the site and see that the sport tandem claims a total weight of 65 lbs...having a target helps you get a sense of how "exotic" or "creative" you need to get to achieve your goal relative to some known designs.

In the camp of general build light tips... i would add the following:

- no nails for attaching your deck. i have done decks very successfully using packing tape to hold them in place until glue dries.

- keep the shear clamps small. on the regular chesapeake with nailess construction i only had 1/2 inch overlap of shear with the side hull and 1/4 inch proud so that i could then plane it to the deck shape. and on the inside corner of the clamps i used a 1/2 inch radius router to give a nice smooth result.

another take on the shear clamp idea... i recently have been building an arctic hawk and how they do the shear clamp is with two layers of 4MM by 3/4 inch wide 4' lengths glued up to the shear...this struck me as very light compared to the spruce and much more uniform with respect to the spring of the wood so it seemed pretty easy to get a fair curve.

the whole arctic hawk has the internal side of panels preglassed prior to assembly so you get a lot less wasted resin sitting around...

no need for a large deckbeam under the front of the coaming. only needs to be there for forming the deck....but with a bit of extra glass in the area...in the arctic hawk, the deck beam is then removed.

as lee said...only make it strong where it needs to be....the arctic hawk has 2 X 4 oz layers on the bottom but only 1 X 4 oz on the sides and 1 X 2 oz on the deck with a bit more reinforecments (extra 2 and 4 oz strips right in the last 6inches on the ends of the boat.) all interior panels have a 2oz layer with an extra piece of 4 oz in the cocpit area......anyway...the point is that the cloth appears to be very strategically used to be strong where it needs to be and to avoid excess weight where not needed.

my sense is that if your target weight is in the mid to high 50's....you can get there with 3mm construction and paying close attention to building light....

however, if you are looking for less than that....the design and or construction technique is going to need to be a bit more "unconventional".

In Response to: Re: 3 MM hull? by Kyle T on Mar 1, 2005

Replies:

• Re: your target weight? by Mark Camp on Mar 2, 2005
  • elaboration by Howard on Mar 2, 2005
    • Re: elaboration by LeeG on Mar 3, 2005
    • Re: elaboration by Mark Camp on Mar 4, 2005
• Re: your target weight? by Kyle T on Mar 2, 2005
  • Re: your target weight? by Howard on Mar 2, 2005
• Re: your target weight? by LeeG on Mar 3, 2005