Thank you Domenico

for passing your thought about the construction of the

KD 122. Always best, from hear from the builder self.

How far is the DUO 900?

Ciao Bernd?

开云体育

Hi,

as a reminder to all new prospective KD122 builders: should anyone be willing to cut in half building time, I am selling ready (laminated, faired and antifouled) hulls and ready-to-assemble plywood parts. Everything is available for a visit and inspection 60km from Venice airport.

Everything has been built by Domenico and inspected by Bernd

I am always glad to hear about another KD 122 build. We have taken a long time to build our Voyager, but then again we have had some delays. Last year a big tree fell on the barn (this time not in a hurricane) and smashed 1/6th of the building. And other life delays over the past few years. Seven surgeries, another child born, etc. And I don’t work on Sundays or during the evening time when we put the children to bed. In general, I have tried to not sacrifice family time, but there is an ebb and flow to the work as we try to work on it together often. ?My work style has been careful and over-thought until recently, when I have tried to learn from Domenico and others to release perfectionism and just build the boat well. Building the boat itself has not taken very much time. It is all the extras that take most of the time. Including the few places where I have departed from the plans.?

Another thing that slows us down is the winter season. Will cold weather be an issue? Insulating the shed is expensive but nice to have. Our shed is not insulated. I tried to heat small parts of the boat over the winter for a while, but it never worked great. Then I built a small box shed between the bows and insulated it to have a place to precoat panels and make small parts in the cold weather. It works great.?

Building the hulls took four or five months. You could do it faster than us, but that was plenty fast. If you make the three beams before flipping the hulls, you can use your friends who help flip the hulls to also align them and place the beams on. That all went very fast. Making the bridgedeck floor was not too slow either. I think Domenico wanted to use pvc pipe external floor supports instead of making the ply and mahogany ones in the plans. But you have to glass and sand them either way.?

Then I really started slowing down and getting lost in the details. I researched and built composite chainplates, and then composite brackets, stanchions, and cleats. We decided to insulate the hulls and decks. We changed the steering linkage, added aft steps, cockpit seat lockers, a different rig, a different mainsheet attachment, outboard motor sleds, conduits for all systems, and… all of these and others took a lot of thought and added complication. And we were trying to rethink every part as we built instead of just building the boat, then fitting it out. Now we are back to just building, I think. And we hope to finish soon.

I think the construction of the hulls and beams and floor will feel quite fast. Deadlines are not so important for those. ?The slow part comes in the details once the structure is all there.?

Hi

?

I start with workspace. 14X8m is sufficient. Also for tools, material, and space for a good Epoxy “station”.

Time to build the boat is a lot more difficult. To start, everybody has a different work speed. Just for the work hours, we have here two very extreme two extremely different examples.

Domenico in Italy builds the boat, almost ready in a year. But attention, just the time-consuming things like fitting out were not done jet.

Patrick in the USA is now for 5 years busy with the boat. Not to forget, he was very unlucky. A hurricane destructed his working space and half of his work.
It would be nice when both of them could reflect on their experience.

I calculated for me, that I could build the boat in around 2800 hours. I am a bit of a maniac when I work. I am very focused as people, who know me could attest.

A? guy, who was building his own recumbent wood bike had this to say ? Don't measure your progress using someone other rules“


Very true

Bernd

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