Catamaran
Construction - Sarasota Florida
We build and repair multihull boats
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The latest images of the khd 32 including the launch are here. To the right, as of january 20, 2004 from our webcam. Our shop is about
2300 sq foot, but offices take up a good part of that. we will just
have enough room to work around a 16' x 32' cat. the door is only
12' wide, but there are ways around that; a new 16' door, which
would be lovely but expensive, or cutting the door frame and removing
a bit of building skin temporarily. much cheaper for one use...
and easier the second time. we set up the shop during the summer
of 2003 in a wonderful space at the end of a dead end cobblestone
street, one of the very few left in sarasota. we started out with
a couple of small building jobs, we put a floor and a deck onto
a unique nomex/prepreg 19' bowrider that had been built from leftovers
from the stilletto factory, and pulled from a mold 18 years ago.
here's a picture of it. Below - here are jerry and jim applying carbon tape to the crossbeam stringers prior to sheathing the crossbeam with laminated plywood skin. the bulkheads are 6mm and the back is 9mm. the stringers are laminated spruce 18mm x 36mm with 13 oz unidirectional carbon tape over the top. the skin is two layers of 3mm bagged together over a form. i went to a lot of trouble to scarf in some bending plywood so i could wrap ply all the way around the tight radius and avoid strip building, but i think that it might be faster to just strip the whole thing. it's complicated by the fact that there is no easy way to get at the inside of the beam if you put the back on first to hold it together. we cut a couple access holes on what will be the bottom of the beam glued onto the floor of the cockpit. i think strip building the skin on a female form, glassing the inside, and then gluing it onto the frame would probably be the best way.  |
here
we have a pair of hull sides in the bag under 18" vacuum. the
black breather material is polyethylene fencing mesh- 25 cents/sq
ft at home depot and it works very well. epoxy pops right off of it.
the clamps are there to flatten out the top edge which tended to get
pretty wavy. we built a compound curvature mold, it is about 35mm
higher in the middle than on the ends, but we weren't able to get
the plywood to take all of that curve without trading off some serious
waviness on the sheer. probably would have been fine, and the extra
fullness at the keel would have come in helpfull when lining up the
spread hulls. the bagging went well, we did the final pair in under
two hours. we built eight hull halves in four sets. the bottom (keel)
edge that is in the lip, tends to injure the bag when placing the
sheets of plywood into the lip, we added a second strip of poly about
six inches wide along that edge to protect it. the bag was taped together
with package tape, which worked quite well for two people, one holding
the poly straight, and the other taping. takes about ten minutes to
seal up a bag. there are different types of poly out there. we used
up our first roll and bought a second one at home depot, six mil instead
of four. but when we tried to make a bag out of it, it turned out
to be full of pinholes, and have a very slick surface that tape would
barely stick to. so we returned it, and reused some old bag material,
which was preferable. the manifold is a drilled garden hose, the vacuum
gauge came from ebay for $8, and the vacuum inlet is just a 1/2"
pvc tee stuck to a piece of plastic with five minute epoxy. |
 stacking all eight hull sides before lacing and squeezing. |
 current stage of the cabin. |
 looking forward through the hull |
all the pieces coming together |
A
few pictures for your edification. 
after
that excursion, we were ready to start on the next thing, a kurt
hughes 32' power cat. actually, we had planned on a 31' 6"cat,
but after all was said and done, it looks like we are at a few inches
over 32 feet! 
home about us power tris pictures lots more power cat pictures a big khd catamaran
Catamaran
Construction
Sarasota FL 34236
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