Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Frames

As you can see from the design, the frames are made of fir.  I drew up the frames in TurboCAD for a purpose.  One of the most time consuming processes of building a boat is ensuring that the frames are built to proper specifications.  Working from these old drawings is easy, but I wanted to cut down on the amount of time it would take from start to finish.  I am lucky enough to have a friend at Weaver Boatworks in Deale, MD (Jim Weaver).  He's a great guy and he and his company make the finest ocean power yachts in the world.  Visit his site and you'll see what I mean.  He happens to own a computer controlled routing table too.  I am lucky to call him a friend and not because he is allowing me to use his equipment.  It's because he is a great guy with or without a CNC routing table.

After drawing the frames in CAD I was able to export them into DXF files which they have converted to CNC code for use with their routing table.  In 1 hour their machine will save me 4 weekends worth of work on the frames.  I'll pickup the frames tomorrow and my son and I will begin to mount them on my jig.  I'll take a picture and post it once we begin this process.  I'm looking forward to a productive start.  He and I are going to have a great spring break project!

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