Origami Hull

The Origami hull is a hull formed by folding steel into the shape of a hull.  The hull plates are first butt welded to form a two large flat plates. Each of the two larger plates will be formed into one half of the hull from bow to stern.  To form each side, darts are cut into the plate and the gaps pulled together, bending the plate into it's three dimensional shape. When both sides of the hull are completed they are brought together and welded down the keel.

Test pattern for a single chine origami hull.

Here is an example of an Origami Boat pattern for a single chine hull.  You can download and print the large image of the pattern, then cut out the pieces and tape it together to see how the process works.

See "Paul's 65ft Origami" for an example of how a large origami hull is built.

Want To Lean More about Origami Boat Building?

On Alex Christie's web site, Origamiboats: The Art of Frameless Steel Boatbuilding,  you can find more information and purchase a video and book that covers the origami building process in more detail.  You can also join the Yahoo group; Origamiboats as well as a FaceBook group Origamiboats -- Frameless Steel Yachts.  You can also download a self extracting (zip) compressed file of all of the messages on the Yahoo group between it's creation and Jan of 2010: Yahoo_Origamboat_Archive_Feb2000-Jan2010.exe.  Thanks to Ben Okopnik for putting that together.  And Ben keeps an updated, online searchable archive is here:  http://okopnik.com/origami.

Building a Model

This is our attempt to translate the paper plans into a CNC cut 1/8th scale model. ...it's close, but the plans need some refining.

We did 1/12 and 1/8th scale models until we had a pattern that pulled together nice. 

Repeating this on full scale will be the real trick.

Metal Arrives

Movie - Unloading plates 20 - 6 x 45 ft plates. Freshly rolled off a coil it looks really clean.

Moving Big Plates of Steel

We decided it was time to move the steel inside the fence on up on cribbing where it will be easy to access from the building pad. We learned some lessons about moving big plates of steel along the way.

Finally, after making myself get out of the submarine building projects, it was time to start building a sailboat.

Lofting

Plans modified from test models list offset distances from a straight line between two points. Line laid out on the steel with a punch mark at the offset distance. 1/4 x 1" flat bar tacked to the plate at a distance from the marks equal to the radius of the plasma torch cutting head. Cutting the steel with the plasma torch. A piece of sheet metal held on with a hose clamp extends slides along the flat bar. Bow of the hull trimmed to shape.

Flipping the Hull Side

We will have to flip each hull side over 6 times, welding a little more on each side every time in order to balance the weld contraction and limit the amount of distortion.

Yes, we can life a 5 ton piece of steel 18 feet into the air with two 3 ton manual chain hoist; but it's a lot of work and it took me 4 hours to complete.  ...so we broke down and purchased two 3 ton electric winches.