Modelling

Modelling- we are not talking about some latent desire I may have to grace the cover of a magazine, those of you who know me and those who have surmised that the overly paunchy guy with the bald head that you see in some of the boat pictures is the guy on the other side of the key board you will no doubt be relieved.  If the thought or picture of such an occurrence is now planted in your head, I’m sorry.

What I am talking about is making models of boats, in particular new designs that we are working on, I do not do this often, and usually I rely on the fact that the boats are all modelled in 3D in the computer. Now that we have modelled a number of boats this way and in particular a substantial number of canoes and kayaks there is usually little reason to do so, simply looking at the model will tell us if the wood will bend to make the shape we desire. This judgement call is important in particular with the plywood boats as there is often a degree of compounding of the plywood in the ends of the panels that form the hull and sometimes the deck. Compounding is simply trying to bend the plywood in two directions at the same time; plywood will only do this to a very limited extent.

The boat that is being modelled now is the small trimaran that appears in rendered form on the home page of our web site, http://www.getonthewater.ca/ there are a couple of reasons that I have decided to model this boat to scale. First,  at the present time the plan is for the outer hulls to be stress formed that is two panels will be joined along the centreline and then bent into the desired shape and I want to make sure the final shape that is chosen will work using this method even before the prototype is built. The second reason is simply a practical one, a trimaran even a small one takes up a lot of space, show space is expensive it is much cheaper to sit an 18 x 12 inch [457 x 305 mm] model on a table than to rent the required space, it is also a lot easier to ship leaving room to take other boats which can be displayed more economically to shows.

 The above leads me to touch on part of the philosophy behind our designs, the expense of keeping a boat in a marina and particularly a wide body one is becoming prohibitive for many, one that can be taken home or disassembled and the taken home avoids that expense. Additionally making each section of the boat light enough that it can be carried piece by piece to the launch area will allow access to places you could not otherwise reach.

I do plan to continue with my modelling career even if only sporadically, but I do promise that I will model only boats, and that I myself will only appear when wrapped in one.