For all the HWS gurus…
sorry but you know me…
questions, question, questions
and always out of the box stuff…
anyway,
My brother(Sharkbait) and I have been seriously bitten by the HWS bug and have our own competing projects going on.
My brother’s being Mr. Soul and a fanboy of PaulJ is building his skeleton out of 1/4" balsa using 1/8" balsa for the skins and rails. He took all my clamps as well to his under house shaping room…
Me, on the other hand being the ever eclectic mad scientist took all my left over 4’x8’x2" blue dow and cut out my frames from it parallelling solomon’s strategy. I then cut all my 2" thick blue dow frame components into 1" thick frames on our el-cheapo band saw and now have enough for two boards. My plan is to bag glass my left over 1mm bamboo weave on each side of these 1" thick blue dow foam frames to create something similar to those foam core component walls they build houses and other stuff out of on the mainland. I’ll then bore out all the holes and glue up the ribs to the spine using short 1/4" square hardwood vertical braces glued into the cores of all four intersects where the spine and ribs meet.
I kind of like the idea of a totally water proof internal structure as well as using the strength of the vertically oriented 1mm woven bamboo reinforced by the waterproof and lightweight blue dow core in between the two sheets of 1mm bamboo.
My questions surrounds skinning options and what’s the minimum I should be doing for skins.
As I said my brother’s looking at using 1/8" thick panels of balsa strips, my understanding is that for HWS you should be looking for a minimum of 1/4" thick deck and bottom skins over your frames.
so…
Q1. what is a good minimum thickness for a skin? 1/8" or 1/4"?
Q2. As far as options I found a bunch of 1/4" poplar in 2"x48" through 6"x48" widths and lengths.
would a glued up panel of this 1/4" thick poplar just be too heavy or stiff for an HWS deck or bottom?
I was also planing in mixing the 1/4" thick poplar with 1/4" balsa strips with the 6" wide poplar sitting over the stringer on the bottom and over the ribs on the deck.
If 1/4" is too thick , I plan on kerf or band saw cutting the 1/4"x2"x48" poplar strips in half to get it between 1/8" and 1/16" thick.
Q3. Should I try and kerf the 2" wide strips in a table or slice it on a band saw? both ideas seem spooky from a handling perspective to me.
Q4. I was able to get enough 5/16"x4"x8’ bead and cove knotty pine panels to make a 43"x96" panel of knotty pine for a bottom or deck skin panel. I like the look but will it work as a HWS skin? Or is it just too soft of a wood? I plan on glassing both sides and like the idea of sanding the pine panels once I get them over the frame.
Q5. Another one of my crazy ideas was that once I built the internal frame and attached the first layers of 1/8" balsa along the rail for support. I was planning on routing out a 1/16" groove in the deck and bottom 1/4" thick panels to set the spine and ribs into the deck and bottom skins and then PU or 3M 5200 glue both skins at the same time in a vacuum bag. Dumb idea? Never seen anyone do this yet.
Q6. Finally I’m also thinking of pre building out deck and bottom skins by vacuuming forming them over a mold board using 1" thick 1lb EPS covered on the outside with the 1mm bamboo and do this groove thing on the inside of the 1" EPS before glassing the frame onto the preformed panels. Kind of like reverse engineering a hollow from a sample mold using vaccum tech like they do in other industries using either cheaply reinforced(using bamboo versus carbon) cheap 1" thick EPS foam panels or more expensive 1/2" thick corecel. Having seem anyone take this approach either… Maybe there’s just not enough “soul” in it or maybe it just doesn’t work. And yes, I did read Paul’s blue foam experiment and didn’t get it as it seemed over built with all the carbon put on it.
Sorry for all this silliness…
Pics of all the pieces and effort will be forth coming as the project continues…