Will This Concrete Boat Sink?? Ep 177 - Lady K Sailing
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 เม.ย. 2022
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Do concrete boats just sink or what???
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Wheeelll, a few issues there. As a person who has built a ferro cement boat, … to a Canadian Design (Samson C’Quoia) …, I feel qualified to adjust your commentary. While the general theme is OK, there are some important qualifiers. A properly built Ferro hull is made with a steel armature of high tensile rods and layers of mesh inside and out. That armature must be pulled together with cable ties, many cable ties, or staples in another layup method. However the cornerstone of a ferro hull is in the cement mix. There is a formula of graded sands, pozzolanic ash, Portland Cement and water. The most vital thing with the mix is the water to cement ratio. A 0.4 water to cement ratio is completely impervious to water as the in the chemical reaction between the water and the cement, all of the water is taken up in the reaction. If there is more water than there is for the cement to react with, this starts to make the cement porous. The 0.4 mix is very stiff and difficult to work so the compromise is a 0.45 water cement ratio. The next most important part is in how the cement is applied to the armature. The ideal is to work the cement through the armature from the inside all the way through in one process with a skilled team of plasterers to fair of the cement leaving a uniform thickness of cement over the outer mesh. The less acceptable cementing method is the 2 shot method where the cement is pushed through the armature half way on one day from the outside in, and apply the inner layer on a second day after the outer has cured. This method can leave voids which become longitudinal failures many years later.
A properly built ferro hull is a treasure for a lot of reasons. Yes the hull can be heavier, but that weight is distributed through out the hull giving the boat a very different movement through the water as weight is inertia, and inertia to the slop of waves is comfort when at sea. The difference in ride of a ferro hull to a fiberglass hull is huge.
One really important advantage with a ferro hull is that it will never burn to the water line. you cannot burn a ferro hulled boat.
As to the hull thickness, where this can be true, it is not necessarily true. A classic exception was the ferro cement 73 ft yacht Helsal which in its first Sydney to Hobart race this boat was the very first boat to take line honors, break a race record, and win on corrected time. This incredible feat stood for 35 years before a highest technology Maxi Yacht finally achieved the trifecta.
So what was special about Helsal. Helsal’s hull was just 10mm (3/8”) thick, and it was post tensioned to stiffen the hull. The other difference was that it was a cement, graded sand, and water miscible epoxy mix. I saw this boat under construction in Sydney Australia myself, and started building my first 44ft ferro boat at the same time.
These decades later I was designing a new ferro boat to build but decided that i didn’t have enough life left to go through the process so bought a Southerly 135, which I now live on in the Netherlands. The only thing that could make this boat better would be another 6 inches (150mm) of freeboard (for internal head height) and a ferro cement hull.
For anyone wanting to build a ferro hull, my advice would be to build an internal timber form (cheapest wood possible) and staple the armature build up to the timber form with 316 stainless staples, and the final outer mesh layer should be stainless or titanium mesh. This way you will never have a rusting issue. The cement should be fully researched and you have a trained person supervising the entire mix from start to finish. Cementing day for a ferro yacht is a really great day. Everyone gets an enormous sense of satisfaction. It’s just like a barn raising.
Wow thanks for sharing. This is very interesting.
You really do need skills to finish a ferro boat. That was the problem in the 60's and 70's, people had no clue what they were doing. Is the 44ft ferro boat you built still in the water?
@@sarahoceanhart8145 I don’t know, Sara, I sold it in 1979 and moved to New Zealand. The vital thing with ferro as I say repeatedly is having the correct water to cement ratio in the mix. The other thing that jeopardizes a ferro hull is where it is cemented with the “2 shot” process where cement is applied half way through the mesh on one day and a month later the cement is applied to the inside through to “bond” with the previous application. That is not necessarily a reliable process. The sister ship to mine done by a friend was done as a 2 shot and it is now out of the water with some voids up in the bow waiting to be fixed, but the hull is generally sound. My boat was done as a one shot and with a specialist cement person managing the mixing. The only reason why that hull would be compromised is because I followed the Samson design plan and built in a steel centre board casing of 6mm steel and galvanized. That wasn’t such a good design feature. I would do that very differently today.
Just wondering if with inner and outer mold, Is it's possible using technique like SCC(Self-compacting Concrete) with some vibrator to do the cementing?
My husband and I and two friends built a Ferro Samson design boat in the 70’s. We sailed it around the world and our friends sailed it a second time. Remember cementing day! Army of friends. Really sturdy and handled really rough conditions. Don’t know where she is now but believe still sailing.
I built my own ferro cement boat in the early 80's . 69' took about three years on my off season from being a tugboat Captain for crowely maritime running equipment to Prudhoe bay in the arctic . Did extensive pacific sailing with it in extremely remote areas of Micronesia and it was tuff enough to handle everything I encountered . My only downside was the weight and the strain on the rigging .
There are a couple of other qualifiers to be added here. Re holes: ferro cement doesn’t crack when drilled. Reason is that this is what the dense mesh in the armature is for, to prevent micro cracking, that is why the material works. The high tensile steel rods give the hull tensile strength, the cement gives the material compressive strength, the wire mesh gives the material local strength and binds the cement very tightly together. The cement will spawn away in the exit side but only in the cement above the wire. What we do in an ideal world is know where fittings need to go, use a template to find where holes need to be, drive an awl through the mesh armature to make a hole and fill the hole with a foam plug to prevent the cement filling in the hole. There are newer techniques available today. For instance in my new boat had I built it the plan was to place a pattern of foam plugs in the deck to later bond in through stainless steel fittings which were blind threaded on the outside and the same or exposed male thread on the inside so a repairable timber deck could be fitted above and there were plenty of attachments to fit the internal lining and insulation.
Gluing to cement is successful with epoxy cement pastes. True it would be unwise to glue a load bearing item to a flat cement surface without some kind of mechanical keying.
The best book on ferro cement boat building is a book by Bruce Bingham.
Also to note , we have now fibreglass cement rods as basalt rods. Both do not corrode and are stable in wet environment. Basalt meshing and netting is also available. One interesting question, if using basalt in the cement as an aggregate, would not the weight be extremely lighter(since basalt can literally float on water???)
@@Wake-upCall-zc8id this is not really necessary and probably not a good idea as in over a 40' boat ferro built with mild steel is just about the lightest, strongest, cheapest, and most durable material you can use, and the reason why you want to use steel is because the coefficient of expansion due to temperature is virtually identical between steel and cement which causes them to have a high affinity for each other, and contrary to popular belief, once encapsulated in cement the steel will NOT rust. The big killer to ferro boats isn't rust, it's galvanic corrosion (and the difficulty of seeing it to the average boat surveyor who's not familiar with ferro).
Today, the steel frame of the hull is being replaced by a composite one. The composite is 7 times lighter, 3 times stronger and rust-proof. Today, cement itself is a water-resistant mixture. Such a boat has no problem staying in frozen water. Furthermore, the material has the advantage of being able to accumulate heat during heating. The hull does not have a complicated shape inside. If the ship has separate bulkheads, it will be a very good expedition ship.
That sounds like a very BAD idea. Rust is NOT an issue with a ferrocement structure. The problem is GALVANIC CORROSION. Also, the reason why mild steel is used for the armature is because that and cement has an almost magnetic affinity for one another (just try and get the cement off your steel tools sometime if you let it set up on them). The interesting thing about cement and steel is that they have a virtually IDENTICAL coefficient of expansion/contraction due to heat. That may be why they have affinity. Once encapsulated inside the cement the steel will NOT rust. It's weird, mystical, wonderful stuff (in many more ways than just what I mentioned).
Why would it sink? Tim, If you are ever in Kingston, Canada. Doesn't matter the month or season. In the harbour you will find a 43' Blue hull, white top FERRO_CEMENT Ketch. Been there (on a mooring) over 5 years. More like 10 years. Year in year out. Iced in and ice out. Yes it gets ice locked every winter with ice 1.5-2.5 ft thick. I know this as a fact, since I own the mooring. Would you try that with a wood of fiberglass boat?
Brits were talking about making a concrete aircraft carrier and even one made of ice. Nice video!
I wondered when someone was going to bring up the ice aircraft carrier they almost built.
Cement is very good in compression, it will support a lot of weight, but is not very good in tension, or being pulled. That is why we add rebar or steel to it.
I owned a ferro nut cracker 30 made in Australia for 15 years. great yacht fast and very capable in heavy weather , would definitely recommend one for any one looking to get into sailing on a budget..
I came so close to buying a cement boat last year. I didn't have the stomach to pull the trigger. I am very much looking to your Starlink video next week. 😉
A guy from my hometown in Georgia built a cement sailboat in the Philippines and sailed it back to the states. This was in the late 60's or early 70's.
Great episode! Answered a lot of my questions on Concrete boats. Thank you.
Great video about ferro boats. I worked in the concrete industry for years and I prefer a well built ferro boat over a fiberglass one, anyday. It definitely does take knowledge about cement or concrete to be able to produce a well built ferro boat. There's the fact that you have to finish the cementing part in one day and if you have a huge ferro boat, that can be a lot of work in one day. Then it has to be cured correctly. It takes knowledge and skill to make a ferro boat, this is why so many of them are junk. Knowing what I know about concrete though, if the boats are built right, you can have a nice, sturdy and good looking boat. If you find a ferro boat from the 70's that's been sailing around then it's even stronger because the longer they are in the water the harder they get. I've never heard that ferrocement was weaker than fiberglass. In fact I've always heard the opposite, that the ferro cement boat, when built correctly is actually stronger. In my mind, knowing what I know about concrete, there's no way a fiberglass hull is going to have more strength than ferrocement, not when the ferro boat gets cured correctly! For me, I'm going to feel much safer in a ferro boat that's been in the water for years, or that I've built myself. Thanks for the video. Good information.
you don't have to finish the plastering part in one day. You can actually take as long as you want as long as you keep it WET! For example, a couple could weld up the armature in their back yard (literally carrying the sticks of rebar and wire mesh around the side of their house between it and their fence where a car wouldn't fit), plaster up the bottom of the keel, and every day or two go out and plaster up a few more inches in a ring going from the bottom up, and keep doing that until it's all done (also carrying all the materials by hand to their back yard).
And in fact, this would be one of the BEST ways to do it because the plaster keeps getting harder the longer it's wet, so the toughest part of that boat would end up being the BOTTOM.
In East India they have done extensive research with ferrocement, due to the inexpensiveness of its materials and its relatively high labor requirements (which they have plenty of).
The spice must flow.
I worked with a guy who had been a blue Circle cement company concrete tech.
I mentioned boats to him and he said he'd made car coilsprings 😲and all sorts of stuff during his time out of it, he did explain it and how they extruded or moulded the carefully controlled mix. The grandfather of Lucas from Odd life sailing built two motor cruisers from the stuff ..and both of them were still in GWO 50 years later.
The wire mesh if it corrodes is the biggest problem ...
But these days you can make it lighter and stronger by grinding up old glass fiber boats and wind turbine blades and adding it to the mix. 😉🤔
But ...the real breakthrough comes with using basalt mesh and fibers or rebar rods in place of corrosion and thermally different expansion Steel.
Its lighter stronger x5 chemically highly stable and being a rock expands and contracts at a similar rate to the cement.. and can bind to it better. Imagine a thinner lighter stronger concrete hull ....thats fire proof corrosion proof and stronger than historical concrete vessels.😁
It also takes less energy to make than steel or glass fiber..
Making concrete or cement however is one of the biggest bads in terms of energy required and CO2 produced globally so that might need looking at... Still two out of three problems solved isnt bad 👍🏼
My next ferro boat was going to have the outer layer of mesh from thin 316 stainless mesh to prevent any of the steel mesh being near the surface to cause any rusting at all. You can get titanium mesh these days too. The strongest ferro hull built was Helsal in Sydney. This was a 73 foot hull built with a 10mm thick wire armature and built with post stressing tubes integrated. The cement was actually cement and water missile epoxy, then after a time the hull was tensioned with wires through the tubes an epoxy cement was pumped through the tubes. That hull could very well have been lighter than a fiber glass boats of the time. Helsal is famous for winning the Sydney Hobart race with a new race record, winning line honours, and winning on corrected time, a trifecta that held for 35 years.
@@williambunting803
William search for articles on U tube about Basalt fiber and structural reinforcement... You will like it lots and its cheaper than glass or metal..
I would take issue with the basalt. Actually cement and mild steel have virtually identical coefficients of expansion due to temperature and are highly complimentary in that cement is great in compression and steel is great in tension creating the virtually perfect material, with granted, the one downside being the steel is susceptible to galvanic corrosion so with regards to that the ferro boat/structure must be treated as if it's steel and its more difficult to the novice eye to spot damage in the ferro structure (but not to the expert who knows what to look for and WHERE to look). As far as weight, I don't really see that much in savings there either (or not certainly in what will be lost in reduced strength in tension in a seaway unless the vessel is not going to be subjected to those conditions, like say a river/lake cruiser wouldn't be)
Great episode.
Found you last week and have since watched all your content. I am better for it! Velen Dank
Thank you!!!!
Can't wait until next week. This one was also very informative. Thank you
Tim. It''s my guess you could be making episodes for the next hundred years or so
but would it be possible to make an episode about some european boats. Smaller yards, yes, but some are quite good... Pleeeease. German. Swedish, Dutch, Danish, English even Poland has at least one, and the Finn's. All seafaring nations with great history. By the way a lot of natical names came from the Dutch
greetings from the Netherlands
A friend of mine built a ferro sailboat and finished it in the late 70's, he sailed it to the Pacific Islands and found himself a wife to bring back with him to the states.
Wow!🤩
Thanks for taking my suggestion on Cement boats and exploring them. And did say incorrectly concrete boats. I have only sailed on one cement boat. And that was a friend’s boat in the early 90’s😁🛫
.. Cheers to you ..
OOOFFPH alert at 8:15. Lawdhamercy
Those of us over a certain age, may remember below ground swimming pools being made similarly, with rio mesh & a concrete pump truck. As a young teenager, I made good $’s off neighbors using my dive gear, & scrubbing all the rust marks with a wire brush.
ferrocement and carbon fiber would make a super strong material
Interesting that I see 2 programs today about using concrete. The first was building a house with foamed concreate where the couple building the house made foamed concrete blocks 6"x12"x3' and where able to pick them up and handle them easily. Seems to have much potential. Then there are the cement boats which have potential but I believe to be far too rigid and prone to fracture to me used in a marine application.
Benford did experiments with 4'x1'x planks made from ferro (he was using 19ga wire mesh along with 1/4" mild steel rods) bracing them 1" from each end and putting weight in their middles with a knife edge (think wood splitter blade) and his strongest panel (1/2" thick) sustained 700 lbs and bent 4" before cracking (realizing a strength of 19,500 PSI -- enough to sustain the pressure in the bottom of the Marianas trench) -- so it CAN flex and it's PLENTY strong!
Also, if it gets an impact that is enough to crack it, but not for there to be actual water intrusion (e.g. spiderweb cracks) and it stays wet it will actually HEAL ITSELF!
awesome Job on that one Tim I still think though well Scary and i was to understand a few years ago they were not repairable do to the mesh used
Yes, chicken wire is NOT the correct thing to use, it should be weldmesh which is thicker, has a square structure and is electrically welded at the contact points. Expanded metal was also a mistake to use as it tended to crack the cement under high stress. Epoxy resin based repairs to ferro boats are very successful these days.
welded mesh is better but the bird wire can be repaired. The big thing is to make sure you electrically isolate the repair from the remaining structure by coating the metal in epoxy and the old cement in latex milk before plastering (and then properly curing the repair by keeping it wet long enough -- usually at least a week but preferably 28 days -- or by steam for several days)
Years ago ( 1988 ) St Clair Collage Engineering class made Concrete Canoes and entered a race some where in Mich or Ohio .
This is still happening. College students can still take part in these competitions.
Great informations! Sir, what do you know about plywood-fiberglass or plywood-epoxy boats to 100ft? It's trimaran, foam insulation, Florida-Bahamas region, motor cruiser carter. TNX! 👌
If you ever read “Mother Earth News” a couple built a Ferro Sailboat and lived happily ever after. Do a trimaran in Ferro Cement!
Repairing one is a tricky chemistry project
not really. You need to isolate the old structure from the new one electrically (due to it starting out at a different PH than it is when it ages) by (after reconstructing/straitening the armature) coating the armature in epoxy and the peripheral of the cement in latex milk. Then you just plaster and age (by keeping wet for at least a week -- preferably 28 days -- or steam curing for 3 days) paint/finish as desired, and you're done: good as NEW!
Sink or not, I would hate to drop one on my foot
Interesting but it's 100% not for me!! I wish you'd do a comprehensive breakdown of boat insurance.
That is literally the ONLY downside to this material. It's only bad because of the bad reputation that a few bad boats gave it and the widespread IGNORANCE of the boating, and especially insurance, community.
Starlink???
And what about coppernickel?
it could be excellent for boat building material except for the cost and the fact that nickel is not very noble so it would need good galvanic protection for the duration of its life
cement is the mix in glue used for products like concrete, plaster, stucco ect. the counters i made today i used four sizes of sand made from crushed white stone, white cement and a tiny bit of water. i will totally put a polished concrete bumper on your dodge ram though.
Steel boats aluminum boats and ferro cement boats ok now do will an Etap sink
Yes, after 1 year and 2 months of waiting I got the email yesterday to order my starlink. I can't wait to test it out!
If I was putting it on a boat I would put the entire thing on a gimbal first. I know it tracks the sats up in space but the boat moves a lot just tied to the dock it moves and rocks. So your power draw and the life of your dish will be less if you don't try to gimbal the dish first. Just my opinion for what that is worth.
Can I assume you are talking about a counterweighted gimbal which will always try to remain vertical?
@@edfrawley4356 Yes some kind of gimbal even if it is home made. The less the dish has to move the more power you save in your batteries when anchored out. 8watt idle is nice but in waves you can see peaks of over 120watts as it tries to counter the motion of the ocean so to speak.
sv sugar rany is cememt
Actually it is SV. Sagar Rani..
Birdwire Chicke wire is too big
they usually use baby chicken wire but the best is to use 19ga wire metal cloth
✌️
At the start of your vid i thought you were, simple re cement. Then you surprised me with the fact you were trolling. Then i came to the conclusion you were just stringing the vid out for content. Thumbs DOWN.