Subject: Re: [baidarka] Failure.
From: John Haynes (jartist@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jan 18 2002 - 21:10:23 EST
I tried getting a discussion going about failed
gunwales but no one gave a reply so I would assume
that few if any have had experience with that
predicament. I just finished a greenland boat in
which the masik broke while I was building my boat due
to my poor design of that component. Instead of
replacing the masik like I should have I pegged the
heck out of it through the gunwale- taking care of the
broken masik- but when I finished zealously and
blindly pegging I realised I pumped so many holes in
the gunwale that it was holding together by only a few
fibers. I just finished up the boat anyway and it's
holding up fine. You can see that the graceful curve
of the gunwale on one good side and the angle that the
gunwale makes at the masik on the side I thrashed
trying to fix the masik however. You have to look
closely and know it's there to see it but it's
definately there. It bugs the crap out of me but it's
not enough to effect the boat in anyway as far as
hydrodynamics go. It's amazing how many mistakes one
must make before one gets good at this. My *next*
boat will be perfect- right?
I don't want to advocate this kind of irreverant
building but I think that the main conclusion that I'm
trying to get to here is that the individual members
in the frame take so much bending and stress just to
hold the torturous shapes that if there are weaknesses
the weak components break while the boat is being
constructed. Once the boat, with its few dozen of
parts in stress, come together the different stresses
end up reinforcing each other to some extent. let's
not forget that as a dynamic structure the loads are
distributed among many parts. This is just a theory
that I developed when I noticed how easily things
break when I'm putting a boat together but how
indestructable a finished boat is.
--- hispaniola <hispaniola@netzero.net> wrote:
> Question. Have any of you out there ever had any
> catastrophic (by
> catastrophic I mean something that forced you to
> shore or made the boat
> unusable until it was fixed) structural failures?
> Like a gunwale letting go
> while you were on the water or something like that?
> If so, what was it? How
> did it happen do you think? I'm curious. Everyone
> talks about how tough
> these boats are. I know that I didn't trust mine
> right up until I got into it
> the first time. Feels rock solid. Now I'm curious
> as to what makes them
> fail.
>
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> Vaya Con Dios.
>
>
>
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>
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