Fruits Of My Labor (A-113)

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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.

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.
'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!!!