Boat Builders and the Credit Crunch

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Yes that's my point. Any UK company exporting products to € or $ markets should be selling their products 20% cheaper this year due to the recent Sterling dive. Despite that, Fairline and Sealine have experienced falling sales overall. Not good

 

[halcyon]

But one point is that for over 20 years this period has been quiet for new boat build, always been show boats and new model sort out time. We don't see the upturn now till Jan delivery for Feb build.
So I do not expect to see a reaction to the exchange rate till the new year, though at the moment orders are up if anything from last year.

So it's going to be a wait and see.

Brian

 

[MapisM]

[ QUOTE ]
That's a bit of a myth. Veneer as opposed to solid wood does not imply inferior quality. On the contrary, veneering is often the right thing to do with woods can means higher quality.

[/ QUOTE ]I guess it depends on what "quality" means.
For weight reduction, solid wood surely is not the best choice, for example.
But generally speaking, I must disagree with your statement.
Just as another example, I don't think you would consider veneer for something like this, would you?

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

[ QUOTE ]
though at the moment orders are up if anything from last year.


[/ QUOTE ]

Do you mean the boat building industry in general? If so why are boat builders shedding jobs and dealers going bust?

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

I agree with you Mario. Veneers are a way of hiding the fact that you've used inferior wood or at the very least wood that doesn't give the required appearance to match other parts of the structure
Also veneers are not as hard wearing as solid wood. They can peel off and splinter more easily especially at sharp edges and joints. And yes, no way would you consider veneered wood for an important structure like the main staircase in a house. We built our own house some years ago and SWMBO insisted on real solid oak for staircases, balustrades and window frames, despite the cost, and she was dead right. The wood still looks fab and it has worn much better

 

[PowerYachtBlog]

yep that was my point Deleted User

many here point to Fairline building superior boats to Sealine and Princess, Sunseeker but IMO there is not much difference
the Veneer from my side was just a provocation, as all commercial builders are built like that i,e. Azimut, Ferretti, Sunseeker etc etc
some builders used to use solid woods on the topsides of working tops i.e. Ferretti, but also the big Azimuts 50 foot plus
now I dont know about the bottom of these boats but to my knowledge only new Ferrettis of the known makers has a non cored bottom, old Fairlines used to be but I am not sure about new ones
may be JFM can tell us more, ok Dinvinycell Coring is good but I would not part that for a solid bottom would I

 

[halcyon]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you mean the boat building industry in general? If so why are boat builders shedding jobs and dealers going bust?

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a passing comment based on supplying the production yards for 25 years. At the moment we have orders that in passed years we would not have had, I have my thoughts, but they are between me and my customers.

As said earlier, we will not know full implication till new year when next years build kicks in.

Brian

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

No, I don't think there's much difference in the fundamental build quality between Fairline, Princess and Sunseeker. Maybe Fairline have a slightly better finish but thats's not the same as build quality and it seems that Fairline use that better finish to promote the idea of better quality and justify a higher price?
Interesting point re cored hulls. I don't know who is using solid hulls and who is using cored hulls and whether those using cored hulls are just coring the sides of the hull or whether the bottom of the hull is cored too. Yes, divynlcell foam seems a bit better than balsa core but it's basically a cost saving measure to save the builder a few pennies and a solid hull will always be better IMHO

 

[PowerYachtBlog]

hello Mike
all sides of most EU builts are cored, accept some exeptions
the bottom is the big question mark here
Ferretti, Rizzardi for example have solid bottoms I am sure of that, with cored PVC sides

Azimut is cored with vacumm baging using divinycell
I think for boat show presentation Sunseeker beats down Fairline to death as far as I have always seen, but i do admit that in after a few years pass over a model a Fairline turns out to be a better boat
for example I have been on SS which do need respray of the topsides after 10 years as all the gel coat is chipping on the topsides, you dont see this on Fairline after 20 years
then the old Fls 80s and mid 90s where so much good builts, before the yard was sold to that Arab guy and now to this group of people

 

[jfm]

All i meant was (sorry, didn't mean to start an argument!) was that veneer per se is not a bad thing. Inappropriate use of veneer is bad, but not veneer per se.

Sure, you wouldn't use veneer when you're using small cross sections with balanced aspect ratios. So a quality window frame made mostly from say sections below 75x50mm should be solid. Likewise the staircase is better in solid wood Mapis becuase that offers greater stiffness (which is what you are trying to get in a staircase) in one direction only, and the biggest section, the stringer, can be made by bonding together two 150x50 sections. A staircase also requires trimming on site during the installation, and holes making for screws filled by plugs, which are tricky with veneer. And they're very prone to kicking, so solid wood helps with that. BUT, note Mapis that the 400mm wide paneling at the top of that picture is veneer. You can see that from the repeating grain pattern, as the veneer is made by unrolling the tree trunk like a pencil sharpener. Veneer in that location is much better- a panel 400x15 section would be bad in solid wood, and would have to be made by laminating together a load of 75x15 pieces, urgh

Anytime you are using bigger flat surfaces, or sections with a streched aspect ratio, it is unquestionably better in the world of furniture making to use veneer. Sections like a door or a table top, perhaps only 15mm thick but perhaps 400mm wide or more, are better in veneer. This beautiful piece from Linley (whose construction I'm v. familiar with) has solid wood for the legs and top banding, but the flat top is veneered water-resistant MDF, usually sourced from Medite in Ireland (the world's best MDF). And this is the very best furniture on the planet today.

Back to those stairs Mario, mine are now installed. I saw them the first time this morning. Two flights of them. They look fantastic! (In solid walnut!) /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[jfm]

"a solid hull will always be better"

Mike that just makes no sense as a general statement. Assuming you use good core and bond it all together well, cored is always better, in flattish panels. It hugely increases the stiffness without any weight (or strength) gain

There will be applicatios where it isn't appropraite, like hull bottoms which are so thick anyway and so stiffened by spray rails and internal stringers that coring is superfluous and inapproriate. But hull sides and deck panels are always better cored (assuming good coring). If you take a 10mm GRP laminate and divide it into two 5mm laminates with say 12mm of quality core you get an order of magnitude improvement of stiffness for zero weight gain.

Remeber in engineering (not just boats, but staircases, bridges, cupboard doors, buildings, earthmovers, etc) you are not designing/building for strenght. Modern materials are so strong they would still not break if you used half as much. You are designing for stiffness. No-one wants their staircase to flex as they walk up it, even if it didn't break. Coring gives an order of magnitude stiffness improvement for virtually no weight gain or increased use of material

 

[jfm]

[ QUOTE ]
Fairline after 20 years then the old Fls 80s and mid 90s where so much good builts, before the yard was sold to that Arab guy and now to this group of people

[/ QUOTE ]

Just some facts PY: The previous owner was S African (Graham Beck). He didn't get involved in boat design or build, that was left to management. It was an entirely passive investment for him, and in fact during the 8 years before he sold the company he did not visit the company once. He just got his dividend cheque each year. "This group pf people" is for a large % the management team (the same guys who managed it under Beck's ownership) and that includes the chief engineering guy who is an outstnading engineer and pretty passionate about product quality. For the other % it is 3i who are not engineers and boatbuilders (they leave that to the management team) though they do care for and use the product a fair bit

 

[Whitelighter]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, divynlcell foam seems a bit better than balsa core but it's basically a cost saving measure to save the builder a few pennies and a solid hull will always be better IMHO

[/ QUOTE ]

Divynicell is actually very, very expensive and would also take longer to lay up than a bit more GRP, especially if using vaccumme techniques.

Its not just another foam core, it is spcifically designed for this use and adds strength/rigidity as well as a high degree of insulation

 

[jfm]

[ QUOTE ]
I dont know about the bottom of these boats but to my knowledge only new Ferrettis of the known makers has a non cored bottom, old Fairlines used to be but I am not sure about new ones
may be JFM can tell us more, ok Dinvinycell Coring is good but I would not part that for a solid bottom would I

[/ QUOTE ]

Fairline don't use cored bottoms. My Sq58 is definitely not cored. I dont think many builders do. As said on other post, coring is for stiffness not strenght. But the bottom of a boat is made so thick, and has engine bearers and spray rails, plus an angle along the keel, that it generally needs no further stiffening becuase it turns out already stiff enough. Coring generally belongs on topsides, decks, superstructure and cockpit panels, where the amount of GRP needed to get the required strength does not deliver enough stiffness. To stiffen you have to add more GRP (weight) or corings (no weight).

It''s important to understnad the distinction between stiffness and strength in engineering/design. They're quite different objectives. Usually you get enough strength long before you've got enough stiffness, with modern materials and things (like boats) made of big flat sections

 

[PowerYachtBlog]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yes, divynlcell foam seems a bit better than balsa core but it's basically a cost saving measure to save the builder a few pennies and a solid hull will always be better IMHO

[/ QUOTE ]

Divynicell is actually very, very expensive and would also take longer to lay up than a bit more GRP, especially if using vaccumme techniques.

Its not just another foam core, it is spcifically designed for this use and adds strength as well as high degrees of insulation

[/ QUOTE ]

all surveyors that I know say Divinycell is good, but to say it is better then a solid GRP bottom is a bold Overstatement as each surveyor that I know would not agree with you

if you compare a 1 inch thicj dininy cell and you do the same with GRP the cost would be much more in the later case

most recognized dinviny cell properties are the following

1) you save on time due to the thickness of Divinycell
2) you save weight
3) better insualtion that is a fact
4) better water resistant to balsa
defects
1) less flexible to glass but also to balsa has better flexing rate also to glass

 

[Whitelighter]

Will you at least read what people type.

I didnt say whether i thought a Dyvinicell, Balsa or Solid GRP bottom on a boat was more desirable.

All I said was that Dyvinicell is not a cheap option as the previous poster suggested, and that it had some benefits over grp when used.

 

[jfm]

[ QUOTE ]

all surveyors that I know say Divinycell is good, but to say it is better then a solid GRP bottom is a bold Overstatement as each surveyor that I know would not agree with you

if you compare a 1 inch thick dininy cell and you do the same with GRP the cost would be much more in the later case

most recognized dinviny cell properties are the following

1) you save on time due to the thickness of Divinycell
2) you save weight
3) better insualtion that is a fact
4) better water resistant to balsa
defects
1) less flexible to glass but also to balsa has better flexing rate also to glass

[/ QUOTE ]

Very few surveyors know much about engineering. Those surveying in the <25m GRP category are (generally, with some notable exceptions) not smart enough to be engineers. Their opinion on Div etc is neither here nor there

Making a comparison between 1 inch thick Divin and 1 inch GRP is just nonsense

And on your points 1-5
1. Are you suggesting a boatbuilder just wants to get to a thickness the fastest possible way, and using a thick piece of coring gets him there faster? That's just nonsense
2. Yes, that's the crucial point. No added weight for an order of magnitude increase of stiffness. Or much less weight than solid GRP for the same stiffness
3. Yes, though this is incidental as insulation is easy/cheap to add anyway
4. Yes
5. Yes, but you look like you're confused on what a core does. The coring material per se adds zero stiffness. all a coring needs is a high sheer strength plus good bonding to GRP. Egg boxes would be ok if they had some sheer strenght. The chief benefit form coring is that it creates a space between the two GRP laminates either side of it, but at the same time it locks the two laminates together so they cannot move in shear relative to one another. That, for an engineering point of view, is all a core does. Just like the middle web on a steel "I" beam. It doesn't need to be a stiff material. Indeed, you can take a 1m x 2m roll of 12mm Airex and roll it up into a tube 300mm diameter. That's not a stiff material!

 

[AdeOlly]

Cored boat hulls have a number of issues as outlined in David Pascoe's articles here

Persoanlly, I'm intending to stick to hulls that have a solid bottom!

 

[PowerYachtBlog]

yeah Jez I read your post but I wanted to clarify your point

as for JFM point 1 was that more thickness gives more stiffness as you highly say, that is what I gave the 1 inch example, if you put 1 inche ogg boxes you migh have mote stiffness but not the desired strength a more time consuming all GRP moulding would do

AdeOlly those articles are very helpful bit if you search more in that site Pascoe praises Divinycell also a good coring also for bottom, it you want solidbottom you might to have to buy and old boat or pay a lot of money nowadays as is the price asked by most builders who go for a solid bottom

a note to MBY, in there past issues 90s and 80s they use to say a lot about the way the tested boat is being built how is it they dont do that anymore????

ok this topic has gone way off topic now thanks to me /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[jfm]

[ QUOTE ]
Cored boat hulls have a number of issues as outlined in David Pascoe's articles here

Persoanlly, I'm intending to stick to hulls that have a solid bottom!

[/ QUOTE ]

Pascoe is a questionable engineer. He's good at splashing stuff on the internet, but is a sensationalist and makes many statements that give away his lack of engineering knowledge. He's sort of the tabloid end of the naval architecture/engineering world. Empty vessels etc.

His main complaints are mainly towards balsa cores, which he has gone on about for years. Imho his conclusions are right, that it is a lousy core material for a hull bottom, though the analysis as to how he gets there is flawed.

His commentary on modern foam cores like Airex (which Fairline et al use, though not much on hull bottoms) is much less negative. You sense from reading his pieces that he'd love to prove foam cores are trash but he can't. So he begrudgingly says they're ok in many respects. His "heat exposure" test where he bends a piece of foam core by placing a weight on it in the sun is just laughable. Resistance to such bending is not a required property of a foam core, so why test it when evaluating the material, doh? As I said above, take a big sheet of 12mm Airex and you can roll it up like a carpet, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some of it even has criss cross slits in it to make bending it easier. Ever figured that one out Pascoe?

I agree your conclusion though, that I'd avoid a boat with significant coring in the hull bottom, though not for the same reasons as Pascoe. But I would like as much of it as possible please in the decks, topsides, superstructure, trim/furniture panels, etc. Which is how a fairline is built.

All imho, and happy to be flamed by Pascoe fans