The idea gets modeled

I once heard a chef say that the first thing a chef does is throw down a piece of meat and decide what to do with it. Ever since then I found myself thinking of this everytime I throw down a piece of plywood and decide what to do with it. Sometimes you have a pretty good idea. Sometimes, you need to measure it to know what your options are.

I cannot think of a finer end to a sheet of plywood then to make a boat out of it. When you don't actually want to go in the garage to cut & glue, it is a fine excercise to try to optimize the boat/plywood relationship. The prism certainly had efficiency and theory going for it, but I wanted something that looked more like a boat.

Following is what I came up with:

I looked at this half bredth for a while and decided, for now, this was the best comprimise between depth and width. I kept one side of the 8" piece a 90 degree to eliminate another lengthwise splice. There are a bunch of ways to use this concept. I'm still undecided between making the kayak or skiff version, but decided in the end to make the kayak, because it is purest to to 100% of the hull/ 100% of the sheet. This is how it cuts up and lays out:

I have a sheet of 1/4" BCX laying around and almost subjected my brother in law and his buddy to partying around my sheet of plywood last Friday. Not wanting to take over the garage, I cut it up out of cardboard instead. The next day, I handed my kid a 6" ruler and asked him to bring me one of his action figures. After rejecting the transformer, I settled on batman and took the following pictures:

Sure I felt a little silly when my wife saw me playing with an action figure in a paper boat. I got over it because I, unlike her, know it's a significant development in one sheet boat design. I still feel a little like a geek though. Hey, she likes to kayak and one day she could be taking the place of batman in a full sized "Bittner" one sheet boat.