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How To Build An Optimist: How Hard Can It Be, There's Only Five Bits of
How To Build An Optimist: How Hard Can It Be, There's Only Five Bits of
How To Build An Optimist: How Hard Can It Be, There's Only Five Bits of
How hard can it be, there’s only five bits of and onto the face of the wood, needing cleaning
wood; famous last words… The answer is, quite up later.
hard, if you want to build a boat that measures up
to the very comprehensive regulations. So now I have a kit of parts. The only problem is
that the edges are all square and some parts need
I started by ordering the plans of a “wood/epoxy” to be chamfered to a variety of angles. If I was to
boat from IODA who are in Ireland but need to be do another one I would build this feature into the
paid in US Dollars! ($56 which is about £30) They cutting and use a five axis cutter which could tilt
come with a book called “A Guide to building a the cut as it went.
wood epoxy Optimist” some of which is useful, but
much of which is at best misleading, at worst plain In addition to all the actual boat parts, the other
wrong. Not that you can tell when you are setting important bits you need to cut out are the “mould”
out on the project. parts. Not strictly a mould, but a pair of formers
that hold the flat bottom of the boat, and the front
The book suggests that you build the boat with a and rear transoms in the correct place while the
12mm ply bottom and attach the sides to edge of sides and bulkheads are fitted, together with two
the bottom, but as the plans have the bottom as temporary bulkheads which are not glued in, and
6mm the dimensions for the parts are different. are later discarded. I made the mistake of cutting
How good an idea is it to have the instruction these temporary parts from 18mm chipboard
book building a different way to the plans? which is very heavy and doesn’t stay flat. Next
Anyway, having done a lot of correction to time I would use cheap plywood, and fit more
dimensions I redrew the plans using my trusty old braces. To the formers is screwed a mould bottom
2D cad system that is so old no one has ever heard which is held at the correct curve by the formers.
of it. This resulted in a number of drawings of all The real boat bottom is then held down to that
the parts which I took on disc to Cirrus laser with some temporary nails or screws, the holes for
cutters in Burgess Hill, together with the wood, which will need filling up later. The front and rear
which I had ordered from Robbins Timber in transoms I had already assembled from some
Bristol. I used their Robbins Elite which is Gaboon layers of plywood so that the frames were already
plywood at 6mm for most parts and 12mm for the part of the panels. These are then tacked onto the
bulkheads and the daggerboard, some parts mould and glued to the boat bottom.
needed to be 18mm so I planned to laminate some
12mm and some 6mm to get to 18mm. Of course
wood is never the size it says it is and the 6mm
turned out to be 7mm and the 12mm, 13mm, so
the 18mm laminate is about 20mm !
David Wedge
August 2004
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© David Wedge, Burcot Boats | www.burcotboats.co.uk