Boat Blind Plans | Didi Mini Mk3 Kit from CKD Boats

Boat Blind Plans

I would have to dig deep in my files to find when CKD Boats first started cutting kits to our plywood designs. Owned by Roy McBride, this Cape Town company has the longest history of cutting our kits and has shipped kits for our plywood boats to many countries around the world. They also have the most experience with packaging large or small kits securely enough to arrive at their destination without damage or loss.

The most remote was a Didi 38 kit sent to Johnston Atoll in the North Pacific. It was a very comprehensive kit that included all plywood, complete rig, keel, engine, sterngear, galley equipment, deck hardware, pulpits, sails and even pre-cut window panels and all the cushions pre-upholstered. This was all packed into a standard 20ft container and had to be shipped via New Zealand and Hawaii, all expertly managed by Roy, his staff and his subcontractors.

CKD Boats has just completed cutting a kit for the Didi Mini Mk3 for a customer in France. It will be packed next week for shipping.

Didi Mini Mk3 sheet fresh from the CNC router.

The plywood components are held in place in the sheets by thin tabs that are left between the full-depth cuts. They are released from the sheets by cutting through the tabs with a box-cutter or jigsaw. This system keeps the plywood as full 8x4 sheets for easy packaging and protection of the components from loss or damage.

Didi Mini Mk3 hull skin panels with jigsaw joints.

The Didi Mini Mk3 is one of the first boats that I converted to jigsaw joints instead of the stepped scarph joints that we used previously. This results in easier assembly and is easier to cut, with less machine time involved. These two panels both show a narrow cut on one side and a wide cut on the other. The wide cut is at the junction between flat and radiused panels, so it has a half-depth rebate pre-cut full length of the panel for the structural joint of the radius panel to the flat sheet.

When this kit is out of the shop, the next will start cutting. This is for a Didi Sport 15 to fill an order from a South African builder.

To see these designs and others in our very broad range, please visit http://dixdesign.com/.

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Boat Plans Bruce Roberts | Didi 950 Australia Project Update

Boat Plans Bruce Roberts

Yesterday I wrote about the Didi 950 of Mike Vermeersch in Ohio, today is the turn for the parallel Didi 950 project of Fred Grimminck in Australia.

Fred is building his lifting keel version from scratch, using plans and offsets. He has been progressing very quickly and should be launching within a few months. His boat is destined for fast cruising rather than racing, so he is fitting her out for comfort rather than attempting to get close to class weight.

The lifting keel foil and bulb use similar details to the fixed keel except that it has no flare and root plate at the top and extends through a steel casing into the hull, where it bolts down onto the top flange of the casing. This is right where the engine is in the fixed keel version, so Freds motor moves to under the companion ladder and is fitted with a saildrive instead of a shaft with stern tube.??

Fred has made some changes from the design, so these photos show some differences from my drawings. Among the changes are encasing the lifting keel casing and mechanism all the way up to the deck and swapping the layout from aft heads and forward sleeping cabin to forward heads and additional aft sleeping cabin.
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Casing for lifting keel being installed. Galley locker will surround it.?
 

Water ballast tanks and double quarter berth on port side.

Galley.

Port water ballast tanks and double quarter berth, looking through into lazarette.

Navigation station.

Looking from nav station, through saloon into forecabin, in this case with forward heads.

Companion ladder to cockpit. The motor is behind the ladder.

Cockpit and cabin.

Deck and cabin nearing completion.

Casting half of the lead ballast bulb.

The next update on Freds Didi 950 will likely be when he launches her.

To see our full range of designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/ or http://dixdesign.com/mobile

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Pontoon Boat Plans | Didi 950 in Australia

Pontoon Boat Plans

Fred Grimminck in Queensland, Australia, has previously built a boat to our Didi Mini design. Now he is building a Didi 950. In contrast to the boat of Mike Vermeersch that I showed yesterday, Fred is building his boat from scratch, marking and cutting the plywood panels himself from our drawings.

Today I have received photos from Fred of his project. He is at the same stage as Mike but the different perspective of his photos shows the details from different angles to help visualise how it all goes together. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Bottom panels fitted, bow view

In this photo you can see how the bottom panels are slightly Veed aft but the V increases toward the bow and the flat panels become very fine, both features to soften the ride when the boat is planing fast in lumpy water and slamming over short waves can become uncomfortable. The edges of the panels land on the doublers of the tangent stringers at the intersections of flat and radiused skin panels. The edges are rebated to half-thickness, with the first layer of radius plywood landing on the doubler and the second layer landing on the rebate, forming a Z-shape joint detail.

Ready for side panels to start

 In the photo above, the doubler at the upper tangent is in place and part of the lower side panel is clamped in place, seen at bottom right. The left edge of this panel has been planed to form the sloping surface for the scarph joint to the next piece, the main difference from the jigsaw joints of Mikes kit. Also visible in this photo, are scarph joints in some of the stringers. These appear to have been glued in place on the hull. The alternative is to pre-glue them into long lengths before installing in the boat.

Interior view of transom and cockpit area

The photo above shows some of the interior detail. The transom is 9mm plywood but has doublers to strengthen it around the perimeter, at the backbone and at the rudder hardware. You can see the plywood backbone passing through the bulkhead ahead of the transom. These intersections are self-locating egg-crate detailing to assist with accuracy during setting up the skeleton. The backbone is on centreline in bow and stern but changes to a pair of backbones offset from centreline from forward of the mast through to the cockpit.

A major difference between the two boats of Mike and Fred is in the keel detailing. Mikes boat has a fixed bulb keel that hangs from an internal support box that is bolted between the two components of the double backbone. The support box also holds the engine beds and bearers, sited directly over the keel. Freds boat will have a lifting keel. It will be housed in a modified keel support box of identical footprint but with integrated casing for the lifting keel and without the engine beds. Freds engine will be a saildrive unit located under the companionway and front of the cockpit.

There are also boats to the Didi 950 design beign built in Greece and Latvia. Watch this blog for news on all of them.

Go to http://dixdesign.com/ to see our full range of designs.

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Kayak Boat Plans | Didi 950 Hulls Taking Shape

Kayak Boat Plans

The Didi 950 projects of Fred Grimminck in Australia and Mike Vermeersch in USA continue in parallel. Freds build is from plans only and Mikes is from a kit that was cut by CNC router. Both have completed the flat sheet panels of the sides and bottom and are now skinning the radiused parts of their hulls. This is the stage that the hull shape really starts to show.

Some of the photos that I show of these two projects show minor differences, due to building from a pre-cut kit or with the builder cutting all components. Both produce the same boat at the end of the process but they may look a little different at times while being built.

Side and bottom panels all completed, ready for radius to start.

The photo above is of Mikes kit boat, with neat edges at the sheer (where hull and deck will meet). The photo below is of Freds boat with irregular edges at the sheer. This is because the kit panels are supplied with a uniform strip of waste to be trimmed off to the final line after turning the hull over, while the boat built without a kit has the panels inividually cut by the builder and the waste width may vary.

Same stage, Freds boat. Backbone still to be trimmed at forefoot.

The radius is skinned in two layers, made with narrow transverse strips. The first layer lies on the stringers and the doublers of the tangent stringers, fitted between the edges of the side and bottom panels. These edges have rebates pre-cut into them and onto which the second layer will be laid.

First layer of radius being fitted to Mikes boat.

The rebate along the edge of the side panel can be seen in this photo.

Final hull shape starting to become clear.

Construction of the boat in Latvia has now started and the boat in Greece will soon follow. To see more of this design and others in our stock design range, please visit http://dixdesign.com.

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Plywood Boat Plans Australia | Water Tanks

Plywood Boat Plans Australia

My current boat ( 28 Carver Mariner) has a whopping 25 gallon water tank and Im amazed at how long we can make that 25 gallons last. On the current boat we use water primarily for washing dishes and an occasional quick shower. The head on the Carver is raw water flushed so we dont tap into that precious 25 gallon supply.

The water tanks on the trawler ( I guess Im going to have to name her soon so I stop calling her the " trawler ") are constructed out of stainless steel. I went with stainless steel vs plastic for a few reasons. Stainless is considered top of the line in regard to potable water tanks. Due to where Im placing the tanks it made more sense for me to fabricate the tanks vs having them fabricated out of plastic. I used 14 gauge 316L for fabricating the tanks. All the associated fittings for the tanks are 3/4 NPT stainless ( fill, vent, supply) couplers welded in place. All the tanks have one center baffle running across the width of the tank. The tanks fit between the frames of the forward area so the tanks have to fit into a 30" wide space. Because of the 2" flange I welded on to the frames I had to make the tanks 27" in width to give me a little room for the install. I might be kicking myself in the ass years down the road, but I decided to not install inspection covers in the tanks. I have a total of 8 tanks giving me approximately 350 gallons of water.

The tanks are held in place with a flange welded on to the front and back of each tank. The forward mounting system consists of a bracket welded to the hull with 3/8 studs welded to that bracket. The forward tank flange fits over those 4 studs and is bolted down. The rear mounting system consists of a similar bracket only I welded nuts to that bracket and used four 3/8 bolts through the tank flange to mount the rear part of each tank. I used studs on the forward mounting system because the bracket is so deep it was easier to get a nut started vs getting a bolt started. It was also easier installing the tank by dropping the tank over the studs then having a little wiggle room to get the bolts started in rear of the tank. For 3/8 studs and bolts I drilled the corresponding mounting flange to 1/2 " and used thick washers for the mount. I made a gasket out of flexible PVC to help isolate the tank bottom from the mounting brackets ( no metal to metal contact other than the mounting hardware). I allowed myself 4" of clearance between the front of the tank and the center longitudinal frame ( center spine). 4" of clearance was barely enough room, as it is a tight fit to get my arm in there. All the tank mounting hardware is stainless steel

To supply water to the pump I welded a 3/4 stainless coupler in the the bottom of each tank. Having given this a little more thought I now wish I had used a pick up tube entering the top of the tank and going to the bottom. Too late for the pick up tube method now, but again I wish I had gone that route. So each tank has a coupler welded in for supply, followed by a gate valve for each tank,followed by a "T" for each tank, all of this terminates into a common supply line leading to the pump. I went with this set up so I could isolate each tank vs all eight tanks having a shared liquid level. If I ever have a catastrophic failure of a tank, I can take that tank off line and not loose all my water. I also have the choice of just filling a couple of tanks if I want. Since I am able to isolate the supply side of the tanks, I also have to be able to isolate the vent side of the tanks. All the vents will terminate at a manifold that can be valved before venting at the wheel house deck above the fill point. The tanks will fill from two points on the wheel house deck via port or starboard fill pipes. Because of the large cabin and wheel house roof areas Im making provisions to be able catch water off the roof to fill the tanks.

I air tested each tank to 6 psi as this will be more than the static head the tanks will see once the vent tube fills to the deck level. After I fabricated the tanks I installed them to check fit and make sure all my brackets would work so I could start the interior painting. If I had been a little more careful with my measuring and fabricating I could have squeezed another 50 gallons of storage in my system, but all in all Im happy with 350 gallons.

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