Woods Skoota 32DM

[fallguy1000]

I have started the Richard Wood's designed Skoota 32DM. The build is getting done with 12mm corecell and Silvertip System 3 epoxy from bateau.com using developable panels built with vacuum and a full female frame. Richard Wood's designed the boat when I told him it was going to cost me 55k to move a fixed Skoota 32 to San Diego and when he decided the Skoota 28 was a little small for my wishes.

Jeff Morrow has been invaluable to me on this build project because he put me in touch with the engineering staff at System 3 to get the best hardener (extra slow) for this massive build project.

I will upload some pictures today. I am building the boat in Minnesota, near Minneapolis, in my garage. The garage was never intended to be heated, so the first thing we did was to insulate the building in April. We have been very busy and I just laminated the first two panels yesterday. The laminations failed, but can be used in a non-structural portion of the boat. The plastic I used for rebate steps became part of the lamination and ain't ever coming off!

This boat can be purchased in half shell form from Cornwall, England and finished by a DIY builder. This would be the easiest way to build to boat and to get away from all the massively long panel fabrications. The vacuum table is 33' 4" long. That is 400" long! The table was built over 32' long floor joists with leveling feet underneath. The table was leveled and leveled and flattened and we used winding sticks and then we divined it. Okay, no divining; powerlines too close.

Pictures forthcoming. I need coffee.

[narfi]

Looking forward to reading your adventures with this project.
If you don't mind would you be able to share what you estimate the cost of materials for the hull will be, and completed cost with paint, furnishings and engine etc....
Also what are your expectations on man hours to completion?
I am trying to sell a friend (not localy) on this design and some of those numbers would be useful for my arguments :p
He is looking for something to live on (comfortably?) with his wife in retirement.

[fallguy1000]

Just for fun, I built a couple models of the hulls. Not really in a super hurry to finish them, but they are helping lead the way a bit on a few things actually. The 1:10 scale models were built with recycled old growth redwood sanded down to 2mm built over the female frames (male). I glued them together with hot glue, then glassed over the entire hull with 6 ounce fabric. Used some west system and various other stuff to do some fairing. Discovered the transom was built wrong and redid it.

Sorry about the picture rotations. These pictures were all rightway up when I brought them over.

As of this moment, these are still getting a little more fairing done to them, then I will remove a section of frame at a time and install the bulkheads. To be honest, I have lost some interest in these for the time being, but I keep working on them now and then.

[fallguy1000]

The next thing we did was insulated the building. It was hard to do upside down.

[fallguy1000]

Then when I was doing my budgeting, a vendor put me on the hotseat for a good price on the beams (56' sailboat mast). I wish the beams were on the floor. Not sure why all my pictures are upside down. They don't look that way when I upload them. They cut the beams in 5 meter sections and Richard Woods says I can use the short cutoff end for the 3rd beam if I lay it sideways. So I'll have an extra piece. Cost with shipping was about $3600.

[fallguy1000]

Then in early June we got the female frames cut by CNC shop. They have excellent vacuum and all the dust falls to the floor, but suspending the expensive CNC from the ceiling must have been tough (damn pictures). The stem piece was the last one and I just arrived to see it getting cut.

[fallguy1000]

The next thing we did was setup the frames. Fun, somewhat challenging. I anchored the frames to the floor with tapcons. We made the base of the frames strong enough to support our weight walking inside the boat without deforming anything prior to laminating joins.

[fallguy1000]

Then we built a vac table It is massive at 49" wide and 400" long or 136 square feet of table.

[fallguy1000]

Then we spent a lot of time tweaking stuff.

The forward section of the boat will be solid fiberglass due to twist and tight corners. It will be laminated after the other panels are in place for joins. Here we are laying 3/8" plywood into the front section to create a mould. If you look closely at the frames; you'll see they were also split to reduce the height of the future lift of the hull.

The CNC had a 1/2" router limitation that we failed to realize and we had to cut it to a sharp vee in a few places.

This is better, but we failed to realize the need for bevel in the forward frames for a bit. Then we used a 22 degree router to cut the bevels (not shown). I think the stem was still too high in this picture as well. Richard sent me some more frame 1 and stem detail that really helped me after I had some trouble. He has been very helpful despite my badgering him with emails. I am a long winded fast typer (a bad combination).

[pee wee]

Why is your table on the ceiling, or did you get the photos right-side up?

Just kidding. That's going to be a big boat and an interesting build. Thanks for documenting it here where we can follow along.