Tender - "Lost and Found"

Top Side

Jack not only drew the hull for the sailboat, but he also threw in a rough model for the tender, "Lost and Found".  The design has a couple of great ideas in it. It's basically a RIB or Ridged Inflatable Boat but instead of inflated pontoons which wear out and leak it uses ridged foam that is sandwiched between two sheets of aluminum and which is held in place by a vinyl cloth cover.  The foam will extend 6 inch beyond the aluminum sheet to provide a soft bumper that wraps around the boat.  And squared off nose gives it a good surface area to push against hulls for moving boats around as well as an elevated work deck.

We made the decision to scale it down from 20.5 ft to 16 ft so it fits onto the sailboats transom easier. To convert the model into plans I dissected it to make it easier to measure and then created a CAD drawing from the the pieces.

Transom Dissected for measurements. My first model along with the trimmed off parts that will be used to adjust the CAD plan. Five models latter it fits together rather nicely and the CAD plans are ready to be used.

After the plan is in CAD it is easy to scale it as needed and then start the cycle of printing it out, cutting it out, hot gluing it together and adjusting the CAD drawing for things that don't fit nicely together.

I cheated and use our CNC cutting table.  By putting an ink pen in the router I simply have the pattern drawn onto poster board.   See more about the CNC table here: Ballpoint Pen CNC Tool

Poster board is about the limit for a 16 inch model; the heavier card stock works much better even when I increased the scale to 1.5 in to 1 ft which makes the model 24 inches long.