Glued Lap Melonseed

[Camsail]

Newbie here, so please forgive any dumb questions. smile.gif

I'm thinking of building a glued lapstrake Melonseed from the Marc Bartlo plans. I'd like to build the deck of Sapele marine ply, and finish it bright. If possible, I'd like to avoid any seams.

One of the larger suppliers offers oversized custom ply, 5' wide, 14' long. So the question is, could you build a cambered deck out of one sheet of ply, so that there wouldn't be any seams? Or would the bends in several different directions make that impractical?

I've learned quite a bit by reading the various threads, but haven't seen this particular issue discussed.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Chadd Hamilton]

i dunno...sounds possible especially if the plywood is of any quality. The deck camber isn't more than a few inches. I haven't built one(yet), but Marc has and he has a photo documentation of damn near every step of building the mellonseed.

Mark's Mellonseed. (http://www.nd.edu/~cozzi/boat/index.html)

Chadd

[Camsail]

Thanks, Chad. I've seen that site, and you're right . . . he's pretty thorough.

This ply's supposed to be pretty good, so it sounds like it might work.

[Chadd Hamilton]

If you test bend the ply over and you see that it isn't working and you have to split it into two workable sections, you could always cover the centerline with a small strip of decorative wood...can't beat the look of mahogany ;)

Post some pics of your progress when you get up and running. It's a great boat.

Best of luck!

Chad

[Camsail]

Good call.

If I make it far enough to show some progress, I'll definitely post some photos. I imagine I may have a question or two along the way . . . smile.gif

[Philip Maynard]

You can only bend it one way but if you precut the hole for the hatch then you could then turn up the nose some through that section.

[Philip Maynard]

But I was only speaking of the forward section, I do not think it's worth the effort to make the entire deck in one piece