F-44SC Catamaran: simple

5.30.2010

Simple ...you've got to be kidding.

Unknown said...: Allen,
Hi - Graham F-41#7 Vancouver (BC)
I see you made the bows for the boat - how did you make them? mold or just sheets of foam?; 31.5.10
Unknown said...: I learned how not to creating the two bow sections. Rather than having to deal with lots of big chunks of foam, I chose to create "stay in place" bow molds themselves with sheets of 3/4 core cell foam and just fill them with two part pour foam. Since the F-44SC boats have a more angular shape, this was fairly easy to do and I had a perfect form.

However, my supplier suggested I do the pour in one fell swoop. BIG Mistake! No matter what kind of external supports or framework around your foam mold, the expanding foam always wins......It's that last bit of expansive kick at the end when the foam has no where else to go.

Building the shape with structural foam sheets and placing a few tie rods connecting the two sides then pouring about a ft. at a time would work nice. Doing this would allow one to control the distortion of the foam mold. Once cured, the foam stays in place to be glassed and fared into the rest of the hull.

In my situation, I ended up having to plane down my foam to get the shape I was looking for. It was a lot of extra work but I ended up ok.; 31.5.10

F-44SC Catamaran