I am never certain when blogging about boat building that everyone reading the blog understands the development process and so I decided I would take it from the first steps to the day when we complete the first boat and sea trial her. Long before launch day a new design is just that, a design, made with paper and pencil. Our design team works away at size, performance, features and styling and eventually comes up with "an envelope" which in time becomes a fully developed CAD design for the new boat. Meanwhile marketing and sales start their jobs by finding comparable boats in the market and assessing their virtues (good and bad).
Once the design goes to the tooling shop a foam billet is created and is then placed on the table of a very large multi-axis milling machine. The machine then goes about cutting the shape of this very complex design into the foam billet.
Once the basic shape is achieved the machine makes finer and finer passes until the surface is ready for final finish. Last week our designer was down in Florida to inspect the hull plug. Here are a couple of images of the plug nearing completion at Marine Concepts.
