symetrical boats

[timddo]

I have been wondering why boats are';t built the same. If i take a tape and measure the sides from one side to the other, it's not the same.

Basically what i'm saying is. In reality, you should be able to fold the boat in half and they will be identical. There seems to be a bit of distorsion .

I have radio antenea's mounted on both sides. When upright they are in different angles ( mounted exactly the same on both sides).


Is this normal or just dogy work?

[BM]

G'day,

TJ Bear will be better able to answer this but suffice to say that the "plug" with which the mould is taken from is hand made normally and as such there will be a degree of error due to the hand made process. A higher level of diligence when producing the plug will minimise such errors but being hand made generally means inherent imperfections.

Cheers

[Noelm]

might also be twisted from sitting on the trailer if not on level ground, or the antenna bases are slightly different, or the boat is not the same both sides, be pretty rare to be noticable though I would reckon.

[timddo]

I can agree on Fibreglass boats, But aluminium boats are the never the same either. It must be the jigs they use

[Jabiru658]

It happens with Plastic boats as well, my 4.55 centre console polycraft isn't far enough out to notice but I'm aware of a couple of owners who have 4.8 cuddies and they've measured a difference of almost 2 inches in the cabin/hull measurements from one side of the boat to the other. That's getting somewhat extreme in my opinion.

[stevej]

i recon quintrex used 8 milk crates as the jig for my little tinny
or even worse they just dont give a crap about quality anymore

[FNQCairns]

Next time at a boat yard stand off diagonally to a rear corner and sight across one gunnel up along the other to see how well they run forward together. Some of the tin boats I have seen are seriously shocking and has to be the result of a pushed out boat.

I heard years ago that the older fibreglass boats where deliberately built with some asymmetry above the waterline and inside as they considered it appealed more when casually viewed...dunno how true.

cheers fnq

[TJ Bear]

As fibreglass moulds are built over a timber plug they are never perfect, I know of many well known brand trailer boat where the distance from the chine to the style line is out by up to 4 inches from port to starboard, planing strakes are out by inches from port to starboard. I would be confident if you took a tape measure to any fibreglass trailer boat built in Australia you could find at the very least some small variation from port to starboard and in some boats this is considerable (put a tape on a 580 Breeze) does it make any difference to the performance? not that I can tell. Can you see it ? Only if you know its there.

Many of the newer US boats are built of plugs built from CNC'ed foam then the moulds are taken from these so they are very symetrical however often not fare. If you put a faring battern on them the radiusus are not true and have flat spots agian does it matter, I think not.

[Getout]

Nothing man-made is perfect. If you run a tape measure over your favourite hand-crafted surfboard you will be disappointed. Best not to know sometimes!