Planning to build a sailing dinghy / tender

[Owly055]

Knocked together a crude posterboard model of the Wood's Design Crayfish 8' sailing pram yesterday while brewing.  It went quite rapidly as the main drawings were to scale, so I was able to simply cut out the sides and bottom and transoms, and attach them to the posterboard and trace them.  It's not perfect by any means, but it gives me a small scale model to handle and examine in 3 D.   I didn't do any of the interior features, deck, seats, etc.     The Crayfish plans are sketchy to put it kindly.........but for 5 pounds sterling, at today's exchange rate, one cannot expect much.   5 downloadable printable pages, 3 of which are drawings, two in scale......I'm not sure exactly what scale..  9.25% by my calculations, which is a bit weird.   Plan to pick up some heavier material and make a larger model using normal lofting methods, at 20% scale to experiment with "features".   As my intent is that this be a "life dinghy", I'm interested in more front deck, as well as side deck / flotation compartments.   I don't necessarily intend to build this boat, but it's a good starting point.  I like the fact that the bottom is one piece, with fore and aft splits partway down the keel, instead of being two completely separate pieces.   The splits are straight, merely allowing a sharp V and no compound curvature.  There is a lot of rocker, but most dinghies have a lot of rocker, and I assume that is a necessary feature.  All measurements are in millimeters, which is nice to work with.   American boneheaded stubbornness has prevented us from adopting the metric system, yet I have to use metric measurements nearly every day.   I have the basic conversions almost hardwired into my brain.. 25.4 MM to the inch, one Klic is .6 miles, as well as the Celsius temp scale.   I don't dream in metric though ;-)   They say you don't really know a language until you dream in that language, I suspect the same is true for metric measurements.   

                                                                                                  H.W.

[Cyric30]

Hay Owly
While i agree with Charlie the B&B design is great, if you just playing around with cardboard  theres the Apple Pie plans online that are pretty complete although i cant say one way or another as to the design. i thought about putting one together out of cardboard to get an idea of scale and such.

[Godot]

I built an Apple Pie. Worked well enough; but I'm a pretty big guy (sigh) for that boat. Worked well enough for a few years, though. Took another large man in the boat with me and it didn't sink; although it rowed like heck.

As to the metric system verses english system, I think there is much to recommend the English system in construction. In particular, it is easy to divide things into fractions.

1/12, 1/6, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2.

If you are an engineer, well, I could see how a fractional system could be quite frustrating. I can work in both. I think English.

[CharlieJ]

When doing boat building with plans in Metric, I find that easier. BUT I still also think in American- can't say English any more because the US is one of only three countries who DON'T use metric  and the other two are third world- Liberia, and Mynamar

we're so cutting edge:)

[Frank]

Being born in the 50's in Canada, I was brought up on miles, inchs, feet, yards and Fahrenheit temperature..
The government started the switch over in early 70's and by late 70's it was pretty well complete.
Totally confused many of us for a while and confess to still thinking feet, inchs and miles per hour.
It totally confused the construction industry so much that after about 2yrs  trying to switch, it went back to 2x4s, 4x8x1/2 plywood etc.
Guess that probably why I stil think that way. Raised with it and worked with it all my life.

[maxiSwede]

Ah, those imperial units!

In Sweden I believe the metric system was adopted a couple/few centuries ago....I would have to google to "remember" exactly when.

Still today, older carpenters go buying " 2x4rs".  ;D

[Jim_ME]

A few things do seem to lose a little something in conversion/translation...

like cowboys with their now 38 Liter hats...