CORECELL CONSTRUCTION

[nabeelah]

came across this method of construction while surfing the net.looks expensive though.anyone with any commments pros,cons.Its amazing the breakthrough in composite techonology!!

[clt_capt]

Corecell is about like any coring material - it's function is to separate the skins, as that is where the majority of the stiffness of a laminate is derived from - Separation of the outer and inner skins.

Corecell has considerably less density than glass/resin matrix, so it can reduce the overall weight of a boat when used correctly. It is great for above waterline applications - the sheer, the deck and the house portions of the boat, where typically extreme strength and impact resistance are not required.

It is better than some core materials (ie: end grain Balsa) when it gets wet, but not nearly the shear strength.

From a cost standpoint it is cheaper than a solid resin/glass laminate of the same thickness...

For one-off single-skin construction, it can save time and money - strips of corecell can be used instead of wood strips over the jig. It can then be faired easily before glassing - saving considerable effort - If I remember correctly, Brokensheer built a working plug and had photos to go along - do a search...

[nabeelah]

What would be the best material for the hull?

[billschwabe]

What would be the best material for the hull?

There are a large number of boats using that particular foam core for the hulls; Merritts, and Spencers (43's at least) among the most noteworthy in our genre'. Core Cells physical charateristics make it very suitable for hull skins and they offer it in several densities to cover different loading needs.

There are several different brands of foam and honeycomb cores; Core-Cell, Divinycell, Airex, Kledgecell, Coosa, Penske, Nida-Core, Tri-Cell, etc.. Each has it's own plusses and minuses, that can all be combined to build total composite boats. We've been using all of the above for something like 16 years now and I can say from experience they will add about 30-50% to the materials cost of a boat but can also get some of that back in labor savings once you figure out how to use them (vacuum bagging being one of the big ones). Using it in molded boat construction isn't something I can speak to but the end result is probably about 25% more expensive than "traditional" cold-molding, epoxy based techniques. The benefits are you end up with a boat that will last virtually forever, has built-in floatation, weighs up to 50% less than comparable boats which go faster and save fuel, all excellent attributes to say the least! I continue to use more and more in the big boats and that skiff in my avatar is all foam/honeycomb too!

[brokensheer]

Hi Bill, we use it a great deal and from our shops testing we find it to be a much more imact friendly core (less brittle) if you will Our lasty boat we milled our own bead can cove strips and planking is very fast!. PM me if you need more info, All the best Bo

[nabeelah]

surely looks neat!! this was built using airex foam

http://www.elitemarine.co.nz/bt_huntress.htm