Big Bend Florida
Sportsman Guide
Ken Owens' XF-20
Project boat
Specification
Changes
Hull
1) The original xf-20
design had no floor with exposed stringers. This certainly kept
the weight down but might cause some problems when fighting a fish or
transversing the boat. Cat-A-Tonic definitely wanted a sole
added.
2) The forward casting platform while
adequate was not as large as Cat-A-Tonic would like. In
addition, there was no rear casting platform. Again, Cat wanted
not only the two casting platforms but also a 1foot gunnel walk around
to make it possible to go from the front to the rear of the boat
without having to step down the 19" to the sole of the boat.
While all of this added functionality,
and certainly made the boat more fishable, it added considerably to
the overall weight of the boat.
The solution chosen was to
construct the casting platforms and sole plate out of Nida Core.
A Honeycombed
Polypropylene material, which can be easily epoxied. Nida Core
has a weight
of 9 lbs. per 4' by 8' sheet.
By
substituting Nida Core for the Merranti in the
original design's casting platform and seating and constructing the
new sole and extended rear and forward casting platforms out of this
material, the boat would retain its original weight estimates.
Ken's words on calculating the
boats weight: "All the Merranti parts came to 317# You can add
probably 10# for butt blocks. The epoxy weighs in at just a hair over
9# per gallon. Nine times 15 gallons is 135#. Eight sheets of Nida core at
9# each comes to 72#. A hell of a lot lighter than Merranti. Extra
stringers, because I am installing Nida Core for floor and decks, come
to approximately 20#. Rolls of biax tape weigh in at 3# ea.
total 15#. All totaled, it comes to approx. 535# plus or minus. A full
roll of 50" 1708 BiAx cloth is around 125#. Subtract the
designed material wastage (15%) and a good guess estimate would say
the hull should finish out at around 570#." This puts it right
on the design specification weight of 575 #.
Cat-a-tonic was
happy, he got all his changes and Ken had not increased the boats weight
from the design specification.
All this changes the original boat to look something
like the modified illustration below
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