This maritime museum quality original from Chris Mroz is currently available for loans to maritime museums and institutions catering to North American Design or Arts and Crafts. The boat should be hung indoors, overhead, and upside down to display the innovative diamond grid-shell and fluted rails.
Mroz's skin boat illustrated here weighs only 28 pounds at 11' 6" in length. It is a completely unique new boat manufactured using Cold Bendable White Ash, basket woven in a diamond pattern, over forms on a strong-back, to form an extremely rigid and light weight interior "grid-shell". The grid-shell is then covered with long stringers of conventional Sitka Spruce from front to back. The bow is also bent from one piece of Cold Bendable White Ash. The very unique side rails in this boat are the prototypes for the original "Fluted Beam", making this craft historically significant. It employs the patented Fluted Beam in an arch configuration with a deep sheer. This Fluted Beam curves in two dimensions simultaneously. Licensing from Fluted Beams is required to construct your own version of the rail (Fluted Beam), but it is simple and economical to license. Working maritime museums and design schools may license the Fluted Beam technologies at nominal cost, with just a little documentation, The compressed wood basket woven grid-shell may be duplicated in your own designs without licensing.
This boat is finished with a Dacron cover (aircraft covering grade), then varnished, along with the wood work. It is applied in the manner illustrated at www.gaboats.com. Heavier ballistic nylon fabrics (12 oz) should be considered since the Dacron is susceptible to puncture by barnacles and sharp stones but it is otherwise extremely strong and light weight. The Dacron is susceptible to UV degradation. Both the Dacron and the wood frame will take a lot of abuse. But after youv'e left it on top of your car for a few days, padled through weeks of rain followed by weeks of sun, and forgoten it on a dock for a couple more weeks, store it indoors.
This design itself is reminiscent of a Geodesic Airolite boat, but modified to suit this new building approach which allows for a lighter, quicker to build and more rigid craft for the weight. Although a typical home built dinghy takes about 100 hours to complete, this grid shell design was built in under 40 hours. I expect that the boat could be produced in one weekend by a small team of boat builders, making it suitable for a demonstration craft at boat shows and maritime fairs.
Most of the Geodesic boat designs would suit this grid-shell construction technique and I recommend you seek out their plans and materials at www.gaboats.com. I am looking forward to one of you producing some Kayaks from these new techniques. To order Compressed wood for your own marine projects, please go to Buy Cold-Bend™ Hardwood.
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