Anders

regards Andy

If well sailed, built, rigged, and trimmed the Noux will be as competitive as any other design.

“common knowledge” about the best bulb cant angle seems to indicate that the front of the bulb should be angled up about 1-3 degrees. I don’t think anyone really knows why, or what the optimum angle is. Lester’s site probably has a page on this.

I’m not an exper on moulds, but you want to start out with a hard tooling gelcoat. Two or three layers for a total thickness of maybe 1-2mm. After that you want thinner layers of glass, followed by thicker layers. The bulk of the moulds should be something like 3-5 layers of 300g/m^2 ‘criss-cross’ fibers.

I’ve been dissapointed by composite moulds a number of times, so my latest thinking is that small components should be made from cnc-cut aluminium moulds, and for the bigger components (hull, deck) we should find a tooling-board that can be easily cnc-cut and used as such as a mould.

For the boat, people usually use 160-165 g/m^2 woven glass cloth, since it’s commonly available. Twill weave will have the best drape, i.e. form around curved surfaces easiest. Two layers is sufficient if you reincforce the parts of the hull where higher loads are expected (rudder, keel/mast, jib-attachment). We’ve also made hulls with three layers throughout and have no trouble building these boats under the minimum weight.

Jari and I are working on an upgrade to our cnc-mill, so moulds for fin, rudder, bulb might be available at some point. We haven’t found an economic way to do the hull mould yet. A cnc-cut hull plug in MDF would be doable, but a lot of work.

Let me know how it goes,

Anders

Thank you in advance for your information and great plan.

Phil