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A Mistake
in My Bobcat Project
by Wim Verstrate, Almere, The Netherlands
j.w.verstrate@chello.nl
| Reading the articles (and enjoying Duckworks Magazine) I was
wondering if anybody else was making mistakes, all the projects look so smooth and easy
going. Am I the only one out there struggling to make a boat? I started with buying “Build the instant catboat” from Dynamite
Payson in april of last year, and after a month of reading and making my own dictionary
(not everything is in the Webster’s) it was time to start building.
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Photo 1, my carport
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There was still one bump to take: use the
dimensions in inches or recalculate everything to millimetres. I decided to use the inches
because recalculating is a lot of work and a mistakes are easily made. My brother-in-law
from Ketchikan sent me an inch-ruler so there was nothing in the way now. |
| The only change I made was the nesting of the
parts. Because I made the centerboard out of ¾ inch scrap marine-ply I could save
one sheet of ply (even in Holland a sheet of brynzeel marine ply is expensive). I am
building next to my house under the carport so I had to clean up every day for the night,
I never realised that a weekend is so short. |
Photo 2, short side panel
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Photo 3, the extra feet
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After a month of drawing and sawing it was time to
put it all together. So I put up the frames and the side panels; put the stem in place and
pulled in the spanish windlass. Since I have never used this method before I thought it
was normal that there was a lot of tension on the rope but when I stepped back I saw that
the shape of the bow was a bit on the short side. |
| After remeasuring I found out what the problem was.
The bow part of the side panel is divided in parts of 0,9,0 and the last is 1,0,0. But my
last part was 10 inches, so used to metric system I read 1,0,0 as 10 inches in stead off
one foot!!!!.Sharing a problem puts the weight off your shoulder so I called my wife but
the only thing she did was laugh.( I teach drafting and machine building). |
Photo 4, inside detail
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Photo 5, the result
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After a few laughs and a beer or was it the other
way around, I decided to fit in a one foot panel with a extra butt-block( so the butt was
not too close to the stem). As you can see in the
photos the result is OK. This summer I almost completed the hull, she is now laid up for
our wet dutch winter. |
If I had to do it all over, I would use the method of Feet,Inches,Eights again. Even
for us used to the metric system, it is easy to learn and use. |
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