Assembly time

[Eric Sea Frog]

Professors,

I consider building a hard-chined ply hull sailboat about 5.5m long, 2 m large. Ballasted leeboard, jack ze knife or drop-in.
Perhaps a Corsaire. A bit like Weekenders but featuring a better hull, more vee-shaped bottomed.
They say the building time is about 500 to 600 hours. I suspect it isn't stitch'n'glued, but what is in your opinion the longest part of such boats' construction time? All the fill'n'sand, sill'n'fand, jig?
Can this be replaced by faster methods? Will the hull run about okay in the water if I skip the fairing?
Such a question looks lousy I'm aware, but I can only assemble a hull at my marina which means a few weeks.
Thx,

Eric

---
Paranoids are sometimes wrong.

[JimD]

Eric, a few weeks is probably plenty of time, but could depend on how many actual hours out of those weeks you will be working on it. If your talking evenings and weekends sort of thing and you've saves plenty of energy for the task and there's no snags you should be fine. With glues and epoxy/fiberglass remember to factor in cure time between steps. Sometimes you just can't go on to the next step until epoxy cures. As for fairing, depends on how fair the panels go on in the first place, and how ridiculously obsessive you get about perfection. You can fair and sand almost forever if you get to stuck on absolute flawlessness
jimd

[Eric Sea Frog]

Thx Jim, this gives me more hope

[JimD]

You're welcome, Eric. I hope I haven't been overly optimistic. I know a guy who started 'the weekend skiff' about 2 years ago and its still a pile of boards in the garage. I built the better part of a Glen-L Minuet in about a month before I had to get it out of the place I was working in. But it mostly sat with a tarp over it for another year before it was finally in the water. It will be infinitely easier and quicker if you have a friend to offer an extra set of hands for the unwieldy parts like fastening big, floppy plywood side panels.
regards, jimd

[Billy Bones]

You can condense the building time of a simple boat with clear instructions by roughing out most if not all the parts in advance. That is what I did to some extent building my pooduck skiff, details of which I posted on the forum (search if interested). Building time for me, soup to nuts, was 125 or so hours.

Good luck.

[Greg G]

I am just in the final stages of finishing a Bolger/Payson Goucester Light Dory. Although it is not probably as ambitious a project as you will be doing, I also decided to deviate from the plans and do it all stich and glue. In some respects I think in my case construction was slower. As was said earlier, some time is chewed up waiting for one stage of the epoxy process to set before moving on to the next. But if a suitable set of plans is used,(ie those made for S&G )jigs and forms are eliminated saving you time there. Perhaps the bulk of construction could be done at the yard and the more finickey stuff done elswhere, painting,rigging etc. It is a little hard to say not knowing the plans you are talking about. Is there a web sight I could go to to look at this design? Some fo us might be more helpful with a better idea of what you are looking at.

Greg

[paladin]

Be Creative!!!!
Back in 1969....I built all the frames for the main hull and amas' , the centerboard, centerboard case, rudder and many many other parts of a 31 foot Jim Brown Trimaran in one room of a 3 room apartment...very serruptitiously.....with a sabre saw, skill saw, power plane, drill and belt sander.....all using plywood, fir framing and epoxy...It wuz like a giant model airplane kit...and all done in one semester...
:D :D
I must admit my neighbors were also part time college weenies and very discreet...

It must have worked alright...some of the parts ended up in Jim's personal tri "Scrimshaw"....

[Eric Sea Frog]

P'fessors,

Your comments relevant. I've seen your dories and the Minuet: boats with a character. I like the Glen-L 17 too.
I wonder how many days you can overnight aboard a Minuet? The Corsaire is 5,5 m long (about 18ft).
Four bunks. Longer cabin. Very old design, 1954. Affordable designs & boats for every would-be skipper in post-war France. Ply construction shrank prices from ten to one or so. Could be ordered at some do-it-yourself dept stores. Awsome success.
Some still built because they just fit amateur projects, and they race together cuz the damned thing speeds when properly steered and balanced. Sorta planing hull.
Yep, Paladin, I try to be creative, I've built several folding boats in my bathroom. Kayaks mostly. No plans.
A few sites as you asked:

http://www.lutz-kolbe.de/Corsaire/Corsaire.htm
(in German but good pics, the rest in French)

http://gjgg.free.fr/constamat/guide3.htm

http://asso.ffv.fr/ascorsaire-france/accueil/accueil.htm

May be translated thru Google, Voilà, etc.

Cheers

Eric