Radius at the Stern

While working on the radius we also did welding test for the radius and for stringers and frames to find the best parameters and took notes on the boat.

Tha we moved our attention to the stern. You remember we had some problems with the size of the bathing platform. Now it is time to solve all the problems and get a good fit of the platform, last radius plate and stern plates.
Each of them needs some adjustment

The Fall is coming

The first thunderstorm of the year announces that the fall is coming.

We are at the last bow plate.

The interior view now gives the vision of a closed, delimited space.

Curves

Something tells me that we will not obtain exactly this kind of curves!

Getting there....

Radius Chine Part 2

Now it really look like a boat and I start getting the feeling of the final result

 We intentionally left back the last plate

And started the port side

Radius Chine Starboard

Starboard side completed!

The bow was tricky to fix. The shape and the position make it difficult 

Radius Chine Part 1

Radius Chine Part 1

Here we get to what we feared as a difficult part of the construction. In practice it turned out very easy only when we understood few basic principles.
1. Width of the plates should be around 600mm (400 to 850). If you more you get in trouble.
2. You must respect the principle that welds should not be close to each other. So transversal welds of the radius plates must be at least 150mm from the frames and from the welds on the topsides and bottom.
3. Tou must make a plan of the plates.
4. The senter of the plates should be parallel to the ghost chine. (we took a piece of wire fom bow to stern to make it visible!

Here is my plan

And also you need to do some accurate nesting. As the 2 and 1/2 6000x2000 plates will be used completely with little scrap.


The we cut the 6mm plates accordingly

And bent to the 100mm radius the plates (two of them on one bend to save on the green)

After a while we had a pile of curved plates!

From each you can obtain 2 radius plates.

We placed an L reinforcement on the topsides and bottom plating for prevention of distorsion
 later during the welding.

An here goes the first radius

Each plate needs some trimming. We tried to leave a couple of mm between each plate.

An it grew very rapidly

Bottom Plating

Positioning the bottom plates was easy.

We did first the bow side and they fitted perfectly both longitudinally and transversally

Then the stern ones.
In this case the transversal fit was not perfect. We realized that this was partially due to the fact that the centerline was not exactly on the center in the front. It had been difficult to define the exact ceter of the frame. This resulted in a slight offset to the right of the centerline. After correcting the fit was snug.

Notice also the opening for the propeller shaft already cut in the kit.