Checking for twist

Posted by Andrew King on Jul 31, 2005

Hi all. 2.5 years after I first started building, I have my first questions to ask (our first child sort of slowed production down a bit!!). Anyway, I'm a first-time builder, building a WR164 from plans. I have finally stitched the panels together, and after spending several hours (probably too many!) staring down the seams and tweaking here and there, I'm finally happy with the hull. Now, two questions have come up:

1. Can someone tell me if my method of checking for twist is valid. I have hung the hull from the sheer clamps, and before checking I adjusted the hangers so that the boat was level from side-to-side (using a level across the sheers). The boat is not level from front to back, since my workshop slopes, but I don't see how that would matter?. Then I positioned two straight edges across the sheers 4 feet from each end. When I move my line of sight down until the straight edges "touch", they do so evenly, so from what I have read, it seems that there is no twist. I'm just not sure if my leveling out the boat first has upset it somehow, or is that the whole point of the exercise? Thanks for any help you can provide.

2. I cut the bulkheads out according to the plans, but they are not even close to fitting. They are probably 1-2" too wide, and there is a gap of around 1.45" between the bottom panels and the bottom of the bulkhead. I think this is too large to fill with a fillet? Should this make me worried about the hull shape? Should I try to rewire the hull, or should I just cut out a bulkhead that will fit? I double checked the position of the spreader bar for the max beam and it is fine, so I'm not sure what is going on. Again, thanks for any help.

That's it for now. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be clear with the explanation.

Cheers,

Andrew

Replies:

• Re: Checking for twist by Tony Robb on Jul 31, 2005
  • Re: Checking for twist by George K on Jul 31, 2005
  • Re: Checking for twist by Moe on Aug 4, 2005
• Re: Checking for twist by CLC on Jul 31, 2005