Building a Bolger Bobcat (Payson Tiny Cat) catboat from CAD on up

Brilliant work! Well done :+1:

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Congratulations!

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She’s amazingly beautiful! Thanks for taking us on your journey. It’s very comforting to know that CNCing paper plans for any boat is totally doable. Only about 6 months of posts, you’re a faster builder than I am.

Hey @bar, I think you have your project of the month here…:sunglasses:

I love the white on the top of the mast, nice touch! Since you’re so close, you should swing by CLC and show John what you’ve been up to. I’m actually going to be taking my freshly finished boat down to Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle next month to show the end product to the guys building them in a class. There’s also some talk about me teaching some splicing classes.

I’m currently building my sails (jib finished, starting on main) and splicing my Dyneema rigging. It was really gratifying to see her with the mast up, finally. I’m going to use the luff of the main to determine where to mount the hardware on my mast.

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I’m not a sailor, so I only understood about 7 of the words in your post, but this is amazing work! Great job!

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@Sonny_Lacey Wow. Congratulations on a magnificent build.

I sailed when I was a teenager and only casually since but now my kids are just reading the same age as when I started and are out at sailing camp this week. This thread dropped by jaw. I’m a long way from being able to take on this project, as I’m still setting up my shop, but what an inspiration. Thank you for sharing all the details, I really appreciate it.

Beautiful work.

-Jeff

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If you like this awesome thread, you should check out this one:

I’m 95% done with a CLC Passagemaker dinghy at almost exactly 200 hours. In fact, just finished sewing my main sail kit from Sailrite. Tomorrow, I’m lacing the sail to the spars to determine where to mount the hardware on the wooden mast.

P.S. Thanks again @Sonny_Lacey for sharing!

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Very cool… I “stumbled” on the Maslow CNC machine when searching for something totally unrelated, and my first thought was that it would be PERFECT for boatbuilding. I’ve built a few of Phil Bolgers designs- And the lofting process even on the simple ones gets quite tedious. If you manage to get it all on the plywood correctly, you still have to cut it accurately. I can recall thinking more than once during my last build how nice it would be to have access to a BIG cnc router.

I’m getting more and more tempted to order one!

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Make sure to check out the thread below if you haven’t already. I actually love the lofting process, but you’re right, there’s a lot of pressure to make the parts in the nesting diagram actually fit on the sheet. A few months ago, I had to make six planks fit onto a 12’ scarfed sheet. I actually worried about it the entire previous night and it actually took some gumption to go into the shop that morning to begin. I kept checking and re-checking the measurements. On the second to last plank, I finally knew they were all going to fit. I ended up having 2" to spare across the 48" I started with. Whew! :sunglasses:

What boat(s) are you interested in? Would love to discuss it over here:

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How did you get a flat pattern from a compound curve in Fusion?!

The flat pattern is already in the drawings in the plans. That’s what you are purchasing. It’s not until you join the seams together that the compound curve develops (and my mind gets blown). Not trying to speak for Sonny, but he basically redrew the data points from the plans into the CAD program and connected the dots with Bezier curves or other tools that make smooth arcs or straight lines.

Damn! Lol
I’ve been searching for a way to do that!

Interested in the paddle boards you spoke of. Can you post pictures or info on any of the paddle boards you built?



SUP_handmade_md

@fajay,

Here is the finished board and the CNC-cut innards that I made. It’s a longboard design with medium rocker and a gentle deck curve. The fin is a single large, old-school D-fin made out of Okoume plywood. Nose and tail are some blocks of old yellow pine I had laying around.

The outer skin is recycled fence wood that I resawed down very thin and then made fair with hand plane. The rails are foam-core fiberglass built up from “pink” insulation foam. A layer of 4oz glass fabric covers the top and bottom, with 7oz. on the rails. The epoxy used is Entropy Resin’s Super Sap.

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would you be willing to share the cut files and or the dimns?

Would you?

Yes, I’ll look up my old cut files when I’m back at the shop. Sorry for the delay; traveling again.

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Much appreciated. safe travels my friend.

That is really awesome! Bobcats are fun boats, care to share the files? I’m planning on doing a 19 foot boat, but a bobcat first would be a great starter!

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I would love to share the files, but I will have to first get permission from H Payson’s company (the original blueprint creator)… I would not want to give out anything that is their intellectual property/copyright without their permission. Sorry for being a stickler on that, but I don’t want old Payson’s company to feel cheated. I’ll check with 'em.

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I actually have the blueprints, plus for the Long Micro. “Dynamite!”

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