Tony.... hay T o n y... where ar.....
send out a search party boys,
Tony probably froze half way to the shop.
Bring im a beer, bring im some antifreeze!
Spring is on its way!!!
is there an alternative to Ariel coamings as we know them?
Hey Tony.
The coaming breakwater whatjermacallits:
Doing it the old way:
After you glued up the requisite block of Mahogany 8/4 pieces,
you could cut the tapers and the rabbit out with the table saw.
Or be easier to bandsaw the tapers (two cuts) then cut the rabbit out on the table saw, no vacuum bagging. Could jackplane the big round corner, no problem.
I just saw a 24 footer by TedBrewer. It seemed inspired by Alberg. Had a lazarette behind the cockpit. Had the same LOW varnished coamings that you can't lean against
and can't sit on, if the boat is on 'er ear. Or just see better forward around the cabin.
I've been threatening taller backrest coamings on Little Gull - which would mean taller breakwaters in the front off the cabin. Like maybe 16"! They would be big triangular baulks of wood. The coamings are definitely Ariel trademark (even more so: Commander) and a good simple piece of glorious varnished teak or mahogany that really dolls up the ship. A real tall coaming might NOT look so good, though. And water volume could increase dramatically.
Reason says it would be possible to raise the coamings a bit, have winch islands, have stowage compartments, even make the coaming SITTABLE... with an added cap rail. That's what I'm aiming at.
It's a quandry - I worried about it - just can't give up the satisfation of that mahogany furniture. And I don't know if I want to give up that elegant RUN of coaming by breaking the eye with glass winch islands. They could be painted wood color. Tacky.
I've tried to imagine the winch island laminated with mahogany veneer showing on the outside. Capped with a piece of 3/4, who would know?? What do you think? Can it be done?
The winch island also could be extended along the coaming to make sometime sitting always possible.
And, now I'm thinking, looking at the coaming standoff models you got there that the same thing could be done with them. Fiberglass with wood veneer. Especially with that vacuum bag process. Wonder if it could be done one shot or have to bag the veneer on separately.
Gotta see your vacuum bag process in action!:cool:
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The alternative:
Why not do the whole stretch of the coaming, all together....? The coaming COULD be 5" or 6" across,
a narrow hollow fiberglass box,
would incorporate the winches anywhere on top without the bumpouts (islands) Could be easy to face with mahogany. Even on BOTH sides..... The standoff/return/breakwaters at the front might have to be separate pieces. But we expect that break there. Sit anywhere on them! There wouldn't be much stowage capacity unless it was heightened some. The seatback inside the cockpit could be a open mahogany grid like the galley has for bowls and cups.
Anyway, just a thought.
Try to get the small of the back supported. But try to keep the Alberg/Pearson proportions of cabin to coamings. It'd be epoxied in, wouldn't leak! The stow compartments self draining. Think of the extra cockpit stowage. But we'd lose the side decks. Would that really be so bad?
Add for a backrest some tube rail at the right height that could be padded.
And could be grabbed once in awhile if you ever lost yer balance.
Be great to have them in rough weather.
And offshore they could have sunbrella panels and be incorporated into the spray dodger.
The panels themselves might make a comfortable backrest too!:cool:
If we were more comfortable
would we'd spend more time sailing
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While you're in there, Doc...
We have all this re-sawn ash to use up so I thought as long as I'm waiting I might as well add some ceiling battens to the hull on the starboard side below the cabinets. This time I decided to use some of the 1/8" baltic birth ply lying around to make some curved battens that follow the hull's form.
The curved furniture pieces got a final shaping and are glued in place. Well, on the starboard side at least.:o
It was a dark and stormy night....
Looking really good Tony!
:D
Would love to have had those cowls in the Bahamas... not to mention the sea hood. Really wish we had one on one dark and stormy night anchored off of Little San Salvador..
http://sailfar.net/gallery/albums/us...on%7E0.JPG
This was taken the next moring... we spent the day drying out all our cushions and bedding... everything onboard was so soaked it was like someone had turned on a fire hose below. All of the water had come in one place... the small gap under front of the sliding hatch.
All you'd really have to do is...
Geez! Something as simple as making a form for these coamings is surprisingly difficult! I can't find a line that goes behind the lazzarette hatch that looks smooth. Trying to mimic a CD36 coaming just doesn't fit on our deck (go figure!). The CD 330 and 36 have much wider decks back by the cocokpit and accomodate the wide sweep of the coaming right around and behind. Ours are a bit too...pinched? If you bring the aft portion of the coaming right through the middle of the lazzarette hatch, however, it looks pretty good. Sooo, the new thought is incorporating the aft section right into the lazzarette hatch... Then I thought, do I want a smaller hatch in the lazarette hatch or should I split it down the center line making it a left or right or both type of hatch? This is starting to seem like a lot of work just to reduce maintenance. Especially when you consider I'm adding mahogany toerails and rubrails.
Hollow coamings and a cockpit remo
Tony,
It sounds like you are serious about a fiberglass coaming?
Just surfed by an aluminum Dudley Dix in the making. The angle of coachroof sides is carried aft in a clean sweep to a 2 step transom. That angle visually becomes a very important part of his design - like a facet of a crystal.
The Dix is wide enough so that the cockpit coaming does not have to bump out like ours has to.
Still, a hollow coaming on the Ariel could be made using the seat-back and the coach-roof ANGLES with a nice sculpted curve out from the coach corner. Have to sacrifice some sidedeck to take the wide footprint of this style of coaming.
(Maybe worth a mock up. I'm using office supply illustration board. It's about 1/16" cardboard, stiff, excellent for nice long curves. But also if its sponged with warm water and bent over a form, it'll dry into a more radical curve. And you can almost get a form to use as a mold if you double up and Titebond bent cardboard forms together to get nearly 1/8" thickness.)
It might be possible to get a 3" or 4" top flat across the angled panels that could be capped with wider mahogany for sheet winches and for sitting on occasionally. In CPete's post #276, the 'Nahma' illustrates what I'm trying to say. The sweep out from the coach-roof corners.... the coaming is obviously hollow and is capped. On the Ariel, to get some back support, the coamings would have to be taller and therefor the footprint wider, robbing the sidedeck. Anyway I think the angles are important to have it look like Alberg (or Dix) had a hand in it!
Fiberglass.
I would lay it up over a male foam (or press-board, or cardboard) mold because there are fewer steps that way - tho the finish is harder to get than if you did it in a female mold (which imco is even more of a pita).
OR... maybe a veneer of mahogany could be glued on both inside and outside to finish. With a nice cap nobody would know. And areas of the hollow inside could be useful for storage if you dared cut holes in the coaming/seat back. Eh! Hell, whynot?
Really don't have to go with the curves that fiberglass skin can do. All round single plank coamings with cockpit corners cut from laminated blocks can make bodacious curves too. They be 'posts' front and back like the ones against the coach. You do see coamings sometimes where the posts have been bandsawed with an inside curve too.
Whatever we do with fiberglass is going to end up heavy. 1/8" to 3/16" frp in a hollow coaming of any height is a lot of square feet. The ole Mahogany coaming is relatively lite. But if you want a three D coaming that is hollow inside why not Dudley Dix and use aluminum sheet??? It'll paint up like the rest of the Ariel - and be even less weighty.
:cool:What would we do without CommandoPete's always right-on pictures? Eh!
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H m m m m....
How crazy do you want to imagine?
If you have an inside diesel planned, that may mean you don't need the lazarette in its present form. So, Imagine the cockpit seats going across the back BEHIND THE TILLER. It could be a lot like one of the two boats in your post 271. Then you might mold in those nice radiused corners you like so much:D.
'Course then you end up with a similar problem to mine: where does your mainsheet traveler go??? (My answer is: to hell with the traveler! and go back to the double deck blocks the Ariel originally had...)
You'd have a longer cockpit apparent. You'd even have storage in the thwart seat locker for an anchor and a bunch of other stuff!
And all the Commanders in the fleet would finally have Ariel envy!!!