Building In Steel ?

[witchcraft]

You also might want to consider some of Tom Colvin designs.
He primarily builds in Aluminum however the designs are also suitable for steel. We own one, and have seen several others.
When you buy his plans, you get lifetime support from his yard.
Fair Winds
Witchcraft

[Jeff H]

This probably should have been posted here rather than on the other discussion but what follows is a write up on metal boats that I had written for another venue that I think would apply to your project.

"As I have said before, I am not a fan of metal boats. Compared to wood or glass I think they are way too heavy for the strength achieved and steel is too difficult to maintain. They are noisy and prone to have problems that are not easy to get to and repair. For the distance cruiser any bonehead can carry and use glass or wood to repair wood or glass boats anywhere in the world. Welding a metal boat in some atoll on the backside of no-where is another story.

There is a relatively small market in this country for metal boats; a bit in ignorance and a bit because metal boats really do not make sense for the venues that most of us sail in. While cruising people are a bit more open minded toward metal boats, I think metal boats will be a hard sell in this country for a long time making resale a bit difficult. Many of the metal boats that we see over here are crudely built hardchine affairs. The chines are often laid out without care for their visual impact. Cabin and deck structures are often rather primitive. Hardware is often painted galvanized steel. As they age they develop areas that have been dented in between ribs and other framing. It is not to say that there are not well built metal boats, but the perception of metal boats comes from the poor examples.

When viewed on a strength to weight basis, steel is the weakest material per pound of all of the options with the exception of ferrocement. In otherwords, steel's reputation for strength comes from comparing comparatively heavy steel boats to boats that are significatly lighter that have been built in other materials. If you build an equal weight boat in almost any other material of it will be stronger than the steel boat. Anyone with an engineering background that has sat down and run the numbers knows that this is quite dramatically true.

And before you dismiss the weight issue, I want to point out that weight in and of itself does nothing good for a boat. When that weight is in the hull, it does not increase stability, seaworthiness or motion comfort. It does not increase strength or ease of handling. It does not allow a greater carrying capacity. It does not make a boat easier or cheaper to build or maintain. It just makes the boat heavier and the loads on every working part of the boat greater.

Amongst the proponents of Metal boats, much has been made of the ability of metal boats to bend rather than puncture. I think this is a little bit bogus. That may be true of the extremely heavy boats designed to workboat standards, but not really true of boats built to meet yacht standards which tend to be much lighter. These lighter weight metal boats use lighter weight skins spanning between a more closely spaced frame and stringer system. If the impact is on a frame you are more likely to bend the boat than puncture the skin but an impact next to a frame or between a frame is more likely to sheer the skin than bend it in any impact that would be hard enough to puncture the average fiberglass boat.

The one advantage of steel is a higher abrasion resistance. In the unlikely event that you end up rubbing against a rock for hours on end without puncturing the skin, a steel skin can withstand abrasion better than glass. If you sail in an area where abrading against rocks is a serious problem then steel may make sense. I doesn't for me.

Metal boats are seen as being very durable, but again in the weights of materials used in yachts I seriously question that idea. All boats flex; it is only a mater of degrees. Over time this flexing work hardens and fatigues the steel especially the skins at frames and other hard spots. Rust, mostly from the interior near bulkhead attachments and frames makes the skin thinner. Like any other material each boat has a real lifespan. It may exceed our own but it may not. It is true that fiberglass will also fatigue and weaken over time especially non-cored hulls which tend to flex more. It is true that cored f.g. hulls may eventually delaminate from the core or the core itself may sheer but in well-built boats this is an extremely long-term process.

In a number of studies that I have seen over the years, steel is generally seen as being the most maintenance prone material out there, both long and short term. This is slightly offset by some of the exotic steels being used in the last couple years but for the most part, just like wood you need to keep the actual hull and framing protected from water and air. Unlike wood this means both inside and out. There are areas on a steel hull that are inaccessible but just because you can’t see them that does not mean that they aren’t deteriorating. Rust never sleeps and metal boats actually deterioate mostly from the interior out.

Then there is electrolysis. This used to be the kind of problem that was a compelling reason not to own a steel boat. In the early 1970’s I worked in a boat yard that had to do an emergency hauling of a steel power boat to prevent it from sinking. This boat which had been launched weeks earlier in perfect shape had changed slips and was tied up next to a boat with an improperly grounded 110 electrical system and in a matter of days the bottom of the power boat in question had lost sufficient thickness and was covered with small pin holes that the boat needed relacment of the entire bottom plating. This kind of loss was not covered by insurance. Today, there are ways to generally combat the electrolysis problem but, in my mind, they are bandaides treating symptoms rather than real cures to the problem.

My biggest gripe comes down to sailing ability and how this affects deck and cabin materials. A little of this goes away as the boat gets to be 45 feet or bigger. In boats under 45 feet, steel hulls are just plain heavier for a given strength than any other material except perhaps ferrocement. Weight in and of itself has no advantage at all. More weight means that you need to have more sail area for a given speed and a given sailing ability. More sail area means that a boat needs more stability to be able to stand to this bigger rig which means more ballast which means more weight which means still more sail area. The problem gets worse because steel boats often have steel topsides, steel decks and steel deckhouses. This is weight high above the center of buoyancy and as such reduces stability further making it hard to carry a decent sail area to weight ratio. In the ultimate bad sailing day, it also means that once inverted you are more likely to remain inverted longer. This problem is often addressed by the use of wooden deck and cabin structures. Deck and cabin structures are the area of greatest maintenance in a wooden boat and so you are just upping the amount of manitenance even further.

To answer your question fairly I need to explain my own tastes and preferences. These are my opinions on subjects that frankly do not have one universal always-right answer. To begin with, I am fan of truly traditional boats and also, although seemingly contradictory, fast lightweight modern boats. By traditional boats I mean boats that authentically draw off of the principles of actual historic craft with a high degree of integrity. I do not like quasi- traditional boats that wear their sense of tradition like tail fins on a 58 Caddy. I also like fast/ modern designs that have their own sense of integrity. I find both types of boats fun to sail and ideal for distance cruising but for very different reasons. I have owned both types. For my current life style I cannot imagine owning a traditional boat again but I truly do love them. It is hard and expensive to do a truly accurate traditional boat in metal and it is impossible to do the kind of small high performance boat that I love in Steel.

No matter what material you use, workmanship and quality materials will be critical. I do not believe that steel tolerates poor quality any better than any other material and since so much depends on the welds the welding needs to be top notch. Steel is not just one material but a family of iron based materials. How the metal is made, purified and alloyed affects initial strength, fatigue qualities and its resistance to corrosion.

You often hear that steel can be built cheaply or quickly. Quality metal construction never was cheap. You could build a quality boat in almost any other as cheaply or for less. With advent of computer driven cutters and the more common availability of some of the newer (last 15 years) welding techniques steel has come down in price to the point that custom steel boats maybe less expensive than custom boats in many other materials. The problem in saying steel is cheap is that simple hard chine steel boats with workboat levels of finish are often compared to yacht quality boats of other finishes. Of comparable labor and less expensive construction is glass over sheet plywood. Properly done this can actually be a far stronger and similarly puncture resistant material as compared to steel. Glassed inside and out with quality laminates and epoxy resins, the plywood boat would have far and away less maintenance costs and would have a much lighter hull weight than steel, thereby having considerably better sailing characteristics in all ways.

I also think much of the answer in picking a metal boat comes from picking the right designer. If I had to list designers of metal boats that I like, I think that Van de Stadt from Holland does a nice job. Some of their designs still seem to be IOR based, and as such, do not appeal to me as much as Van de Stadt's more straightforward cruising designs. Their design 46A is very appealing to me. Van de Stadt has a very strong reputation for quality engineering and has designed some very fast boats in their day. I think they offer some of their designs on disk so that they can be computer cut saving a lot of time and perhaps money. From what I gather they are a class act.

Yves Tanton in Newport Rhode Island does some very nice work. I think he is a very creative designer with a very nice eye for visual proportions. He is a sometimes participant on this board and I have seen his catalog and it is really an impressive body of work. He has a light steel design called Steel Star that in many ways would make an excellent offshore cruiser.

Dudley Dix from South Africa is a very interesting designer to me. I have never seen any of his metal boats in real life (that I know of) but he is terribly creative and seems to understand what it takes to design a nice performing boat that is also a comfortable cruiser. I like his Black Cat 38, which is a wooden boat. In metal I think the Dix 43 looks like a pretty nice piece of work.

I have been drawing a blank on the name of the guy who has designed the Deerfoot series. I don't especially like his earlier designs but I think the aluminum designs have been evolving into more powerful hull forms closer in shape to my own thinking.

How could I forget Charlie Wittholz? I actually worked for Charlie Wittholz in the early 1980's. Charlie did some very nice, very interesting traditional designs in steel. Charlie was a neat guy. He actually worked for Alden and Rhodes before opening his own shop. I liked his work. His boats had a certain simplicity that was very elegant. He had a nice eye for proportion and a sweet line. Hard chine boats are actually very hard to design so that they look right. The chine forms a strong accent line that has to work with the desired hull shape, the physical properties of the plating and the other visual lines of the boat. Charlie was able to keep these sometimes-contradictory lines under control to produce attractive traditional craft. While I liked most of Charlie's work, one of my least favorite boats of his was a bilge keel cruising boat. (I drew many of the drawings for her) This was a purpose built boat for the European canals and as such was a good boat for its purpose but was not my kind of boat. Charlie and I would have lively lunch time discussions on our divergent points of view on modern lightweight boats. We both loved wood as a building material. I loved his stories of Alden and Rhodes. Rhodes was very much a patrician gentleman but Alden was a very colorful character.

Charlie made the final passage to Fiddler's Green a few years back. His family still sells his designs by mail order. I don't know if they have study plans but he used to have simple list of designs that listed the basics of each design. I believe that their phone number is 301 593 7711. Also WoodenBoat still markets some of his designs.

Bruce Roberts is popular but I am not a fan of his work. It is not so much that I do not like his work per se. I think that for the most part Roberts designs conservative simple boats, but to me they are dated. His Spray series have less than no appeal to me. Having read about the original Spray and the sailing ability of some of the so- called copies of her, I have come to believe that Josh Slocum made it around the world despite the short comings of Spray rather than because of her sterling virtues. Josh Slocum was the consummate seaman. Spray was a coastal oyster boat. Why anyone in this day and age would want to use her as a model for a whole line of boats is completely beyond me. But I emphasize this is only my opinion and Roberts has sold a bunch of these things so my opinion is not shared by everyone on this.

Roberts more modern designs were probably good designs in the 1970's but a lot has happened since then. To me his design ideas have not advanced as well. That said, Roberts has a boat he calls a 434 that someone built as a long range single-hander that looks like a nice boat but slightly dated to my eye. Still in all these are very heavy boats and I strongly believe that weight, in and of itself, has no inherent virtue and is a very serious liability.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, much of the questions in sailing have no one right answer. That does not keep people like me from having strong preferences and opinions. My opinion suits me, and the way that I choose to sail, very well. It may not suit you at all. It is easy for someone to refute my opinion on some other criteria than my own. As I have said before on this BB, ultimately that debate can have no more substance than a trying to prove that Vanilla ice cream is inherently superior tasting than strawberry ice cream, (which is why these are called 'opinions'). "

Good luck
Jeff

But Jeff, we all know french vanilla is the superior ice cream.

[Alan Wheeler]

Heeeey, you guy's need to come down to Kiwi land and try our Hokeypokey icecream. Mmmmmm, icecreeeam.

OK, I'll bite. What is hokeypokey icecream?

[CaptainK]

Yeah Wheeler,

And how many flavors does that brand of ice cream have?

[Alan Wheeler]

Hmmmm, how do you describe hokeypokey
The icecream itself is a Vanilla flavour with these little balls of hokeypokey mixed in to it, that give it a slight caramel'ish taste. The hokeypokey is made by boiling sugar and Golden syrup till it caramelises and then add bicarbonate of Soda. Very yummy.
We also have a candy bar here in NZ called a crunchy bar. It is a solid centre of hockeypokey coated with rich chocolate. Mmmmmmmm, chocolate.

OOOOO! AAAAAH!

[CaptainK]

Alrighty Wheeler,

When I do get a boat. And when I stop over in your country. I'll buy a box of those candies!!


Regards,

Kevin
CaptainK

[Alain d'HYLAS]

have a look at:

http://www.hylas.ws/ConstructionHYLA...nstruction.htm

http://www.hylas.ws/ConstructionHYLA...nstruction.htm

and good luck for your project..

[Brent Swain]

I have been designing, building and cruising steel boats since the mid 70's and wouldn't consider going to sea in any non metal boat. I've singlehanded accross the Pacific 9 times. The maintenance on my current steel 31 ft twin keeler is around an hour or two a year. The original epoxy is 22 years old, yet is as good as the day I put it on ,except where it has been chipped on corners.My last two trips from Hawaii to BC took 23 days. You couldn't exxpect to do much better in any heavily loaded 31 footer no matter what it was made out of.The first 1,000 miles were to windward . My best run was 175 miles in 24 hours , off the Washington coast.
Roughly 150 boats have been built to my designs. Many have done a lot of offshore cruising including circumnavigations. None would consider anything but a metal boat for offshore cruising. There are too many cargo containers floating around out there to be hit on a dark foggy night.
I've devised a method of metal hull construction which reduces the building time by 90% .I've pulled together 36 foot hulls in two days from the time the steel arrived ,and tacked together shells ( hull decks , cockpit , cabin , wheelhouse, skeg , and rudder ) in six days.
My book "Origami Metal Boatbuilding" describes the proccess as well as containing much more info on building your own roller furling, for $80 and building your own 540 gallon a day RO watermaker for under $1,000CDN, hatches, self steering,portable engine driven welder, woodstove, etc etc. Alex Christie( achristie@shaw.ca) has made a DVD of the proccess.
My standing offer to Jeff for a demolition derby between my weak steel hull and his strong fibreglass lightweight hull still stands, as does my challenge for him to show me how much more damaging a fibreglass hamer is to a piece of steel than a steel hammer is to a piece of fibreglass.
Brent Swain
brentswain38@yahoo.ca

[DeepFrz]

Check out http://dixdesign.com/designs.htm

I would recommend getting the steel cut from files generated from the designer. I think Dix is a very reputable designer. (I have no affiliation)

[Jeff H]

Hi Brent,

Nice to see that your hyperbole hasn't changed over the years. And yes, I agree with you, that you are right that you and some other people prefer going cruising in steel boats and some of you have managed to circumnavigate the world. Of course, the number of steel boats completing circumnavigations represent a very small percentage of the boats of all materials that have completed circumnavigations.

Since you and I have had this debate on this website yet, lets walk through this.

Build time and cost: While it is true that you can tack weld a steel hull very quickly using an 'origami' technique, if you compare the overall build time with welding, finishing and constructing an interior to an equal level of finish, in prior analysis that have been posted previously on other sites where we have debated this in the past, other techniques require similar cost and time to build, which is especially true since steel prices have ratched up relative to other materials.

Steel vs Fiberglass hammer:

Again, I will refer to my previous analysis on this one. Start with the hammers, to begin with we need to compare hammers of equal weight. So in other words, for example, we need to compare say a 20 oz framing hammer made of steel to an fiberglass hammer of equal weight and weight distribution. The fiberglass hammer would have a head nearly 2 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. If we use the laminates that I have advocated in the past, I would use the vinylester resin used in crash helmets and kevlar laminate in the actual impact areas. The impact resistance of that hammer would be several times greater than the steel hammer.

Then we need to look at the steel and glass that we are beating up with these hammers. In a past analysis that was posted on the Origami website, I had calculated that a fiberglass panel able to stand up to a 20 oz framing hammer would be somewhere between 3/16" and a 1/4" thick. If we compare that panel to a steel panel of an equal weight steel, the steel would be just a tick thinner than 5/100's of an inch (,05"), in otherwords something slightly thinner than the thickness of steel used for body panels on a modern automobile. I'll take the equal weight fiberglass hull and steel hammer any day over the 20 oz. fiberglass hammer beating on an automobile panel.

Demolition Derby:
It comes down to the same thing here as well. Again we are talking about equal weight boats of steel, fiberglass and engineered laminate over cold molded wood. Lets start with the problem at hand: if we compare the relative density of the materials involved, they are as follows: Steel= 7.85, Fiberglass= 1.92, and cold molded construction= .45 (3/4" port orford red cedar strip plank with two diagonal layers of 1/4" port orford red cedar veneers and a final longitudinal layer of douglas fir with an exterior laminate of vinylester resin and kevlar with no non-directional glass), So if we start out with a 1/2" thick fiberglass hull, the comparable weight steel hull would be something less than an 1/8" thick (roughly 3 MM), and a cold molded hull would be roughly 2 1/8" thick. The fiberglass hull would have slighly more than 4 times the bending strength and roughly double the impact resistance. The cold molded hull would have nearly 11 times the bending strength, and somewhere between 3 and 4 times the impact resistance of steel.

Again, in a demolition derby, I will take the other materials over steel any day, especially when you consider how little steel would be left of 1/8" plating after a decade of rust.

And as you noted the last time I posted these numbers on another website, if I remember correctly, your hulls are typically 1/4" and 5/16" plate. If we compare a 5/16th steel plate, to equal weight fiberglass and cold-molded hull panels, the fiberglass hull would be nearly 2 inches thick and the cold-molded hull would be 5 inches thick. The strength ratios remain the same.

I come back to my original contention, that of all of the materials that one can build a boat, on a pound for pound basis, steel is one of the weakest materials to build a boat, and if maintained in an equal fashion to the other materials, over the life of the boat, according to all studies that I have seen, a steel boat is one of the highest maintenance forms of construction that one can chose.

In any event, in sailing we make choices based on our goals, fears, and sailing venues. For some steel make sense. For most, there is little logic to owning a steel boat.

Respectfully,
Jeff

[Lodesman]

Jeff - it seems your hyperbole hasn't changed much either. Tell me in boats of the size you're speaking of, how many fibreglass hulls are 2 inches thick? How many cold-moulded hulls are 5 inches thick? The truth is that steel puts a great deal of strength and toughness into a compact package - at the cost of significant weight. All boatbuilding materials have their strengths and weaknesses. Steel is certainly not for everyone, but neither is fibreglass, nor cold-moulded wood. The greater percentage of commercial and naval vessels are made of steel, so it must have some advantages - no? You never answered my earlier question - why don't they make icebreakers out of fibreglass or wood?

Kevin

[Jeff H]

To reply to your post, my post above was intended to illustrate the relative strength of materials by weight. I chose to use panel thickness as clearest way to illustrate basis of the the relative strength of materials by weight. In the example, the greater thicknesses of fiberglass and cold-molded construction result in strengths that are substanially higher than comparable weight steel.

But as you note, no one would build a boat with panels as thick as those in my example. The point that was lost to you in my example is that these panels are substantially stronger than the comparable weight steel panels. If you reduce the panel thickness to something closer to normal practice you can still achieve equal strenght to steel, but a very significant reduction in weight. And that is my primary point.

I don't disagree with your statement that "The truth is that steel puts a great deal of strength and toughness into a compact package - at the cost of significant weight." In fact, more or less that is my key point. I raise this point in reference to someone considering custom building a boat with concerns towards the relative strength of the material being chosen.

I am not sure that I have seen your question; "Why don't they make icebreakers out of fibreglass or wood?" but to answer your question, until the early 1950's icebreakers were typically sheathed in Ironwood. Since then specialized steels have become the norm. As I have mentioned in prior discussions, steel really comes into its own as a vessel gets larger. When you talk about a vessel the size of an icebreaker, the compactness of steel becomes a significant advantage. Also Commercial vessels tend to be short lived compared to yachts. Beyond that, when you talk about an icebreaker, high weight is an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

Lastly, you and I are in complete agreement when you say, "Steel is certainly not for everyone, but neither is fibreglass, nor cold-moulded wood." That is essentially the same point that I was making in my conclusion, "In any event, in sailing we make choices based on our goals, fears, and sailing venues. For some steel make sense. For most, there is little logic to owning a steel boat."

Respectfully,
Jeff