Nice light in the shop this morning. This winter has been pretty brutal so it’s good to finally see the sun. With this last solo frame finished I finally have a solid sample set to analyze the shape that my rib length formula is creating.
To my eye it looks good from the bow to about 25% of the way in from the ends and then starts to progressively slacken to what I’m calling just slightly too soft of a bilge in the midsection. (canoe people, feel free to chime in here!) I can’t say for sure until I get it on the water but I’m anticipating swift and a bit spooky. It actually looks fine to me with the spreaders in but if I pull the spreaders and let it close up for a little tumble home it’s definitely too round.
This issue has been with me from the beginning of the system but I had to see it in a wide variety of scales, L/w and D/b before I could take corrective action because 1) it’s barely an issue, and 2) you don’t want to start shifting a whole system for a problem that only exists at a certain scale. I’ve also just been leaving things deliberately slack because I have a personal preference for narrow waterlines as long as the reserve buoyancy is there higher up.
Now that I can see it manifesting universally the next question becomes what to do about it. This is where designing shaping systems is a lot harder than designing single boats. With one boat you just fix the shape, with a system every change has to work at every scale.
I’ve got a few boats that are just straight up measurement boats and it certainly makes things easier but it also means that you can’t change anything to adjust for sizing and personal preferences. Going the formula route offers a lot of freedom provides there is a formula to be found! It can get super frustrating when the formula is almost right but not quite because you can almost taste the success. At least in this case the problem is minor and very solvable though. If it works the way I think it well it’s actually kind of cool because it provides another way to tune the stability/speed.
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