Boat building starts with a toaster oven!?

While waiting for "The Big Order" to arrive, we spent time setting up a few tools to make construction easier.  The first was a giant toaster oven to heat the foam core so it could be bent to fit the forms without breaking.  This was definitely not my bright idea, I borrowed it from many other builders, and Ian Farrier suggests it as an option in his building manual.  You can see our version in the photos.  The first photo shows it with the front face removed so you can see how it is put together.  It is very basic in design, just a wooden box with rows of heat lamps on top and bottom.

In my version, I used four 250 watt lamps on top and bottom, for a grand total of 2000 watts.  This seemed sufficient given the generally thinner foam (mostly 9 mm) used in the F-82.  Using suggestions stolen from Allen Smith's blog about the construction of his f-41 catamaran (see links), I toast the foam for about 7 minutes.  This is long enough to make it more pliable, especially in tighter curves, but not close to sagging or molten.


Since I fully enclosed the box to help with efficiency, I needed a good way to get the foam in and out.  In the next photo you can see the sliding shelf I built to support the foam during toasting.  I am actually pretty proud of the slides I built from various bits of scrap wood.  They are very smooth, don't allow the shelf to bind, and support the shelf when fully extracted.  I am pretty good at making stuff that doesn't have to look nice or be built to any precision.  Not sure how that is to my benefit in constructing a nicely designed trimaran though, good thing Dawna has a good eye for detail.