Catalogue weight of finished boats.

Hi forum, A general question, is the advertised weight of boats in the catalogue the painted weight or unpainted weight? I have built a Mill Creek 13 & a Sassafras 12. The Sassafras 12 was 9 lb overweight without the seat, not a big issue as it is still light but I was very carefull in my building. Mill Creek was also overweight but that was due to the wood I had to use of which some was meranti. Cheers, Chris.


2 replies:

« Previous Post       List of Posts       Next Post »

RE: Catalogue weight of finished boats.

the weights are generally for 'finished' boats (i.e., all the bits including paint).

that said, the weights, particularly for the okoume boats, in my experience, are challenging to hit and very easy to exceed....even if you are a careful builder.

when you look at the bill of material for these boat....over 90% of the weight is easily accounted for in the Okoume, epoxy and glass.   the Okoume and glass required for a hull is typically very tightly defined and there is not a lot of variation in the weight that ends up in the boat. 

But the epoxy weight is where it is easy to add lbs.  For example, without even thinking about fillets and end-pours, you have a very dense/heavy material applied very thinly and so just a little variation in thickness of the epoxy layer over the surface area of the boat quickly adds lots of extra lbs.   since the layer is so thin to start with, even when you are careful, unless you have a clear strategy to manage the thickness of the epoxy layer, its easy to apply too much epoxy relative to the target weight.   

You can also add lots of lbs of epoxy with fillets and other epoxy structure by making them just a little bit bigger than the size required to hit the weights in the CLC guides (i.e., a fillet that is twice the size of the other  is four times its weight)

the weight of paint or varnish, frankly, is pretty non-material  when you compare its dried weight  (definitely less than 1 lb) relative to all the other components.

if hitting the weight (or better) is your goal, the path is going to be through the epoxy.....

h

RE: Catalogue weight of finished boats.

   I built one of the original Sassafras 12 kits years ago.  I came in about 5 lbs overweight, which I attributed to my sloppy epoxy work, thankfully mostly in the bow and stern and hidden in the compartments.  I was interested because it was for my nephew, who was 10 years old at the time, so I wanted something he could handle by himself.  I agree that it will take a very careful build to hit the exact number, but I could have been within 2-3 pounds if I'd known better how to deal w/ the epoxy in the hard to reach areas of the ends.

« Previous Post     List of Posts     Next Post »


Please login or register to post a reply.