Hi Lachlan
This is my progress to date

I had planed to start work on some fixtures to mount on my Myford Super 7 lathe this week but everything went hopelessly wrong. It started with a trip to hospital with a stone in the kidney and then went dowhill fast. I wanted to work on the equipment I needed to machine the profile in the end of the axle tubes of the S/Y to enable them to fit at the required angle of 53 degrees. However, the first priority was to repair the slasher mounted on the tractor. There was a "Catch 22" in everything I did from then on. It ended up by having to make a new angle plate to attach to the lathe as my original had been knocked off ( by rotten family no less!!). To make a long story short, I made the new angle plate and machined it on the Myford. This took all day and after I welded it, I wanted to take a photo of the fabulous weld and brag about it on here share the photo with you.
Now someone will ask, "What has this lathe work got to do with construction of a S/Y?"
Well, I thought I would show you how I made big holes from small holes when the material, steel plate 100x12 x 300mm long, cant be spun around in the lathe 'cos it's too big. The principle here can be applied to lots of other work with a lathe if you have an angle plate (and if you have a lathe). HHmmmm, that's a big "if" methinks!
The actual job being worked on is the manufacture of new mounting plates for the slasher that is mounted on the tractor. I cant start on the C5 S/Y untill I have slashed all the speargrass (now in seed) on our property to protect the family. My sweet wife is getting very excited as the speargrass is piercing her legs and our G.Shepherd is also trying to bite it out of her fur/skin. I cant fix the slasher untill I have made an Angle Plate. I cant make the angle plate untill I have made some new "Tee-nuts". I need an Angle Plate to make the new "Tee-nuts". Something sounds very wrong here. Perhaps I should add that when I went to find the camera and new batteries, the angle plate cooled and warped badly so I had to grind some of the weld out, make some technical ajustments with a precision knockometer and weld it again.
The slasher is now assembled and I will be slashing the property tomorrow. The hub that the S/blades are mounted on had all but disintergrated and I made/repaired the steel plates in the Myford. The photos show how I held the plate for machining. The cutting tool is made from a 5/16" dia broken center drill and clamped in the 1" dia bar.
By using a similar but different fixture to hold the 60.3mm pipe for the C/5, I can machine the profile at 53 degrees at the end of the pipe very easily using the same style of boring bar. The profiled end of the pipe will then fit perfectly to the spine for welding. The better the fit, the better, neater and stronger the weld.
There are a series of trucks coming tomorrow to dump/spread about 200 tons of road fill on our driveway, then a grader is arriving to repair our drive (1.2klm) and roll it and form run-offs. When that is all done I can start work on my C5. I cant wait!
The photos show how I held the 100x12x300 plate and bored out the holes to 62mm dia.

The photo below show a typical cut being made, it is 2.6mm deep and being cut at 200 rpm.


I hope you understand all this stuff.

Kody

Sorry Hillsie
our driveway is on a slope of about 5 degrees, is in a forest and the wind is blocked by all the trees but it's a beautiful place for quiet and being viewed by the roos, wallabies and myriad kinds of birds. We have I'd. over 35 species including wedgetails and Pacific Bazzars. Its a wonderful place for our home but sadly, no L/Y test track.

Kody

Thanks for reminding me why I try to design "yachts without lathes."
Sounds like the name for a band. glad to see there is a time line with the yacht in it

Hi Paul
Actually, having a lathe alows me to "look outside the box" as it were. I know it gives me a great advantage for building not just L/S's but all kinds of things. I have made countersunk screws .075" dia with only 1 1/2 turns of thread to surgeons opperating equipment to bore hole drills (and even a cannon ). Many of the parts I have made for my own use were just not available off the shelf anywhere within Australia. For R&D work with a S/Y, a lathe makes it all so easy. The cost of parts becomes negligible as I only have to pay for material. I suspect that if you all lived in Rockie, you would all be at my place every other weekend fixing or making parts. (you would all be most welcome).
I wouldn't be without the mighty Myford.

Kody

Hey Pancho,
I think that Ceesco is a leetle bit jealous, yes? about my Mighty Myford lathe. I dont think I mentioned to Ceesco that the Myford lathe I have is also the model with the extra l-o-n-g bed. The bed of the Myford is s o-o long I can fit a length of 31 eenches in the lathe and machine it. Eet is so good, I can macheene the new design of l-o-n-g axles that I worked on last nite.
Don't tell Ceesco that my Mighty Myford Lathe has theese extral l-o-n-g bed or he weel get bad upset, yes?
You only tell Ceeso that when he comes up here next time he is to bring any lathe work or CAD drawing he needs done and I will do it for him.

Kody

Hi Hillsie,
I once lived in Adelaide for six months, I near died of thirst. I couldnt drink the water down there at all, even the bottled water was bad. It's no wonder the ships wont take on any water from Adelaide . If you want some lathe work done, you will have to move up here.

Kody

G'day Everyone,

Interesting idea with your axles Kody, but it may cause some stange handling characteristics once the yacht is sailing. Remember that a 'yacht is mostly driven sideways and loaded up on the downwind wheel.

With the axles on a plain 'T' shaped chassis, (old seagull) this loading produced excessive toe out at the rear in gusts, and made the 'yacht twitch a bit even with good steering systems. This was corrected with swept back axles, (which still cause toe out) but you may find that sweeping the axle forward may make it do some really weird handling once it loads up. The rig would lay over nicely with such a long mainbeam, though.

Have a think about how it might behave .

Cheers, Bill

I'm not 100% sure (ok not even 20% sure ), but when I round the windward mark in a strong wind and the sail gets a belly full of wind and I take off like a rocket, I find that the back sometimes tends to skip out a little bit and I have to really concentrate on the steering or I'll spin out. I've always thought that is what they refer to as twitchy. If not it should be called twitchy

Hopefully one will be along any minute and let us both know In the meantime that's what we'll refer to as twitchy, ok...

You fellas get me more confused every day. I can understand how the leeward wheel creates toe-out and I suspect that the amount may be lessened by the extra long axles by the sweepback. It might be that the extra deflection (spring) in the longer axle contributes to the smaller amount of toe-out produced. Its very hard to vizualize but I am begining to think (wonder) that a forward swept axle might even create toe-in to a certain degree??? I guess the only way to find out for sure is to build one with swept back axles and one with them swept forward. Swept forward certainly have great advantages in the construction technique if I utilize my design of splitting and joining the axles. It is certainly very different and until I build the axle, I wont know if the design in truley viable.

Ok. if you twist my arm hard enough, I will present the details here for you. What I am trying to do is remove all the extraneous "bits" that stick out, up,or down on the axles. The individual axles in my design are joined together by a single HT M14 bolt that fits internally and cant be seen. The bolt is located at the joint section, about 250mm down the pipe from the spine. I am also designing an internal key system to align the two lengths of axle. The only visible indication of the axle being in two pieces will be the almost invisible join itself. If I can get this to work, it will look fantastic. There is also a very good safety factor built in as well. With no bits sticking out on the axles, it will lessen the chance of an accidental cut or gash to ones body.
PS. I have been known to possibly yield info when bribed treated with Cadburys milk chocolate, white chocolate and ice cold milk coffee.(possibly)

I have been reading with much interest how fast the S/L's can go. Can you please tell me how you measure the speed of the S/Y? Do you pace it with a vehicle or do you have some super sophisticated technique that measures velocity using lazers, radar or a nuclear stopwatch?

Kody

"Twitchy" or "squirrely'" is when the yacht does things or goes places without you being able to do anything about it, and very fast when it happens.
What Bill is suggesting about the swept forwrds design is that it will be fine as long as he , or I are not travelling really fast in it on a really smooth surface.

The lefroy mini ,if travelling really fast on a smooth surface, can react to a gust in 2 ways rather than lifting a wheel. 1 complete 3 wheel side slide ( good), or 2 a 360 spin then back on course. This is also OK as long as you keep the steering straight and the sheeting in. Blokarts also perform this little twitchinness very well

Ooooooohh, is that what it is. I just thought that was called "My lack of ability"

In that case I've performed some ripper twitches!! In fact one twitch almost threw me out the back of the yacht.

Hahahahaha, I would loved to have seen that!!

BTW that post reminds me of a question you asked yesterday, ROFLMAO stands for "Rolling on the floor laughing my ar botty off, which is what I have just been doing

If right angled/swept back axles cause Toe-out and say for arguments sake swept forward axles causes Toe-in then I wonder what axle angle would allow neutral Toe when lifting a wheel.

Landyacht: A quick question; have you any idea what the mass of Vindicator is?

Kody: I measured my speed using two spaced markers and a stop wrist-watch, not exact but it gave me an idea. Now I have one of those bicycle speedo's, cost me $30 and appears to work well (shows speed, trip distance, clock).

My limiting factor was me, I was the one sailing and doing the timing. It was a little difficult piloting the L/Y, looking where I was going, holding the mainsheet, lining up the markers with the wheel and pushing the button at the right time It takes a little practise, plus my markers were only 30 metres apart.