Put together the strongback, I thought I had some material in stock it turns out I didn't however I found some 1/2" GOS ply at the local merchant Gibbs & Dandy, our local branch are happy to cut board to size and they had an offcut at 1540 long, it was just long enough! Screwed it together onto two pieces of 4 1/4" door lining material top and bottom to make a box. Then off to the "w@tcou" to finish those shadows and get them screwed to the strongback. PJ knows CAD and has plotter so he had printed the shadow positions for us and we used PVA glue to stick it to the strongback. Then we cut across the centre of the shadows at the underside of the deck position to make removing the excess easier, PJ still has all his fingers, (and both thumbs) Then with lots of raking through my screw box to find enough small short ones, and me drilling and PJ fixing we had the shadows complete, all that remained was to debate fixing them onto the strongback and then get on with it. We retired to the warm to work out the NOR's for next years club competitions and whilst we did the Balsa arrived in the post, so when we had done the brain work we went back out into the shed and debated (at length) the best way to complete the planking. Given the number of steps in the hull we are very glad that we are building a plug and not trying to plank this one as timber hull! We sort of formulated a plan but I am sure this will change once we get started! Costs
strongback material - £10.00 time spent - 6 hours
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We spent today getting the shadows ready for the Romanza plug, I had got the shadow part of the drawing copied 20 times by the local copy shop and spent some of the recent England v Slovenia match cutting around them. With an early start one day last week I was able to stick them to some 1/8 ply I had left over from a job and roughly cut around them with my work jigsaw, I should explain here that I am a kitchen fitter by trade so most of my timber will probably fall of the back of a job! So we now had 20 roughly cut shadows! Todays task was to turn these into the finished article, (well nearly) as there was a lot of lines on the shadows I started by marking around the shadow the line to cut to with highlighter, PJ then cut them out on his scroll saw with a final finish to the exact size on the belt sander. As he was doing this I cut the supports for each shadow from 12 x 15mm pine timber 2inches longer than the bottom of the shadow the final product can be seen here. This final part only took us a couple of hours between us however the cold started to get to us and we decided to call it a day and retire for sustinance before we had attached the supports. Unfortunately PJ's strong back is to short (by a long way) so my next task it to make a strongback to build the plug on, luckily for me I think I have the very thing in my store!
Costs so far plans £45.00 Materials for shadows £20.00 Time spent 6 hours So whats my motivation for building a Romanza, well I am lucky in the my good friend and cohort in this project PJ has the best "Workshop at the Centre of the Universe" and he has agreed to build it with me.
We are both exceedingly keen Footy enthusiasts and have developed a one design class for Bermuda Rigged Wee Nips which has been well recieved by local skippers. We have also developed a class for smaller yachts called the Micro 540 which aims to Grandfather the Micro Magic whilst hopefully encouraging skippers to dive into their tool box and try a bit of building. As you can see our enthusiasm lies with building things, there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of sailing a yacht you built yourself within an event. So why did we choose the Romanza? Mike Ewart the extremely enthusiastic class captain for the Sixes has been sailing Footy with us throughout 2014, indeed it is safe to say some of his enthusiasm has rubbed off I was looking for a large boat project, for some reason the IOM just doesn't appeal to me, the Mableheads look interesting but our local water isn't that deep and so I settled on the Six with it's short keel and classic yacht looks, the Romanza by Graham Bantock was a design that is available and as yet I don't think there any out there. Graham has a history of great designs for this class abd so it seemed the natural choice. As PJ & I are building this yacht together we have determined that we should build a plug, a mould and then our two sister yachts from it, it is our intention to build the hull in carbon fibre. I thought it might be useful to plot our progress warts and all in this blog. |
AuthorI am Footy skipper turning his hand to the Six Metre class Archives
August 2015
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