News:
Many of our kits are now delivered with CNC cut jigs. The jig is assembled like a puzzle. In most cases, the builder does not even need a tape measure. The jig is self-aligning: it is very difficult to make a mistake.
What is Sheated Strip?
All materials used in this tutorial can be found at boatbuildercentral.com
Boat Plans are available at bateau.com
Sheathed Strip:
This is a combination of two well proven boat building techniques:
fiberglass sandwich and strip planking.
While not very common in the USA, it has been used since the 80's
in Europe and Australia/New Zealand.
A hull shape is built from small strips of inexpensive wood on widely
spaced molds. The strips are covered with layers of directional glass
in epoxy on the outside. The hull is turned over, molds are removed
and more layers of glass are laminated inside. The result is a strong
fiberglass sandwich with a wooden core.
The method produces very strong hulls that are easy and inexpensive
to build.
Since the wood strips are in the neutral axis, they can be made of
cheap wood and no delicate joints are required. Gaps are fine, they
will be filled with resin. Assembly is very fast and no wood working
skills or tools are required.
The fibers of the strips plus the in and outside skins are oriented
in an ideal way if the designer specifies 45/45 for the skins.
Specifications must be calculated by an experienced designer.
Do not confuse this method with fiberglassed strip planking. Strip
planked hulls can be covered with fiberglass on the outside but the
fiberglass in that case is not structural, it is only used for resistance
to abrasion and to lower maintenance.
In sheathed strip, the fiberglass skins are structural. They are
much thicker and made of directional glass. The wood core plays almost
no structural role.
Materials for this building method are sold at BoatBuilderCentral.com.
If you did not find the answer to your question, please use our
message board and
we will respond within a few hours.
Or explore the HowTo files at our technical support web site bateau2.com