Black Pearl Project - Forms and Such

The plans arrived for the Black Pearl last Thursday (February 9). It's funny but Cheryl phoned me at work to tell me they arrived and then, jokingly said , "I guess I won't see you for the next six months?!! I promised both myself and Cheryl that I'd not devote the same fanaticism to this build as I did to the Point Bennett this time last year. And  true to my word, I am proceeding with a more relaxed pace this time. Hence the lack of progress reports!!

Here's the first . . .

Plans for the Black Pearl are, what I would call, spartan. But then again, all the designer needs to provide is the actual information to build the hull shape. The rest is up to the builder. Besides, there's a plethora of materials out there on how to build strip boats, so why bother the redundancy of including it with a boat design plan??

The package (envelope) contained a scaled plan view, full size half-patterns, a sheet of instructions and an invoice.

Plan view on top, 1/2 form patterns below.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the beauty of this boat is that Björn Thomasson will design it to fit you personally. In other words, there's no guesswork about whether the boat will be too big/small, not handle properly etc etc. I must admit, I'm glad I payed the extra dollars for this.  For those interested, I had to provide my height, weight, arm span, hip width and shoe size. Thomasson will build to your request as well. My boat will come in at around 18.5" but I know of one instance where Thomasson, at the request of the builder, stretched the boat to 19' 7" for more storage capacity. The plans came to a total of 145 Euros or 190.00 dollars delivered. In the big scheme of things, that's not a whole lot of coinage!!

Here's what you pay the big bucks for - to see that the plans are customized just for you!!

Rather than cut up the plans, I scanned them, then flipped the image digitally, printed both sides (normal and reversed) and taped them together up the centre line. This created a full-size set of patterns from the halfs that were provided.

I decided to go with 1/2 MDF for the actual forms. It has been suggested to use plywood or particle board but I really like how stable MDF is. With a sharp handsaw, you can cut incredibly straight lines as there's no "deviation" in the materials - unlike the voids/splinters in plywood or particle board.

Using a spray adhesive, I glued the patterns right onto the MDF. As there are no curves to be cut at this point (remember this is a chined boat), a sharp handsaw was ideal for cutting out the forms. I'm guessing that it took less than 1.5 hrs to cut and sand them

Forward form patterns glues and ready to cut. 

Aft forms on the left, fwd on the right.

Thomasson's form set-up procedure is very fifferent than that of, say Nick Schade. In the case of the BP, the baseline (see the "tops" of the forms above) is left square and this is fastened to the strongback (or building table, in my case) This will become clearer in the next update I provide but I just wanted to point out that the forms, at this point, do not accurately represent the shape of the deck. The hull, yes, but not the deck. If you look closely at the image above you can see the shape of the sheer and deck. The forms will be trimmed once the hull is finished and the boat flipped over for decking. 

Confused?  If so, stay tuned for the continuing saga of the Black Pearl . . .