[brian eiland]

Originally Posted by FF

Booklet Explaining KSS Boat Building Method - Kelsall Catamarans

I've picked out some high-lights to excerpt from that 'booklet'

KSS stands for Kelsall Swiftsure Sandwich.

KSS is to forget all we know about traditional boat building. This is the hard part. The blinkers of what we know are very powerful. KSS takes the requirements of the final craft, the properties of the materials involved, the structure and what is efficient in the boat shop, and combines them into a common sense handling process.

A full size, flat mould table, usually of melamine covered chipboard, is the basis of the technique. Butt strap joins underneath, join the table surface sheets and trestles to support the table top. The first table was make in 1973. All structural parts start on the table, which allows ease of laminating and provides a smooth finish for one side. Vacuum Resin infusion has been adopted and refined to suit the table, as the standard laminating technique.

The Materials – PVC Foam, polyester or vinylester E-glass skins for the whole structure.

The basis – starting by making flat panels on a full size, simple, flat table.

The major time savings come from

* Working on a table, with a relatively small portion of the done on the boat.
* Picking up the finish from the table, for one side of all parts, plus edge treatment at the same time.

*Resin infusion which produces the full panel in one shot.

KSS has been applied to every size from 8ft to 100ft.

Resin infusion became a KSS standard 8 years ago. It is the “magic” which changes the nature of the whole process of boat building. The boat shop can be clean and smell free for most of the time.

For more than twenty years, we used vacuum bagging techniques, to make foam sandwich panels on the KSS table. The only incentive to change was the improvements resin infusion offered. A high quality panel in the least time, made neatly and cleanly, and with reliability. A panel, of any size, can be made by one person. This is not sales talk. We do it at every workshop. The last workshop group made three 32ft. panels, in four days of hands on instruction to people who had not done it before, with the first day spent in other preparation work.

While working with liquid resins, does it make more sense to work on boat shapes or to do 95% of the work on a flat table, from which a smooth finish to one side is free, letting vacuum pressure do the hard work, to achieve the best standards? Everything in KSS follows from there.

You might also go to his website and look under some of the specific headings. Here are two I might recommend:
Catamarans - Kelsall Catamarans - Boat Designs
Catamarans - Kelsall Catamarans - KSS Materials
Catamarans - Kelsall Catamarans - Boat Designs




….and another reference
http://www.stm-boats.com/articles/L8...sion_Story.pdf