Website and Blog Making Progress Slowly but with Determination!

Those of you who have been patient enough to be checking back to see how progress is going on the new website and the blog deserve an explanation about what is happening.

Due to an excess of work and looming deadlines, Ive been caught between devoting time to the workshop and to development of the new website and the blog. Jobs in the workshop are well in hand (and must take priority), but by September my contracted work will be complete, and Ill then be turning my attention to fun jobs in the workshop, and lots more writing and design work. With good luck and sensible management, this should result in lots more articles and the publication of a stack of designs I have sitting in the wings waiting for finishing touches. Yes, I know you may have heard me say such things before, but I really am ploughing through the work at the moment, and I have for many months now had a moratorium on taking on any new building/repair work.

Tomorrow Ill post some photos of recent work, and a list of current jobs. One particularly interesting project is the building of a sixteen-sided mast for a large sailing dinghy. This mast is unusual in that it is not only hollow, but the wall thickness tapers as the mast tapers, so the wall-thickness as a percentage of mast diameter remains constant. Another interesting feature of this mast is that it incorporates an in-mast hinge - sort of like a tabernacle without a tabernacle (see Woodenboat Magazine #237 for the idea)

Here is a slice off a test section of my mast construction method. There is a very good reason for the angle being cut into one side of each stave, rather than half the angle being taken of each side as they used to do it in the old days. Maybe I tell you why some day...

The sixteen-sided method is probably too labour-intensive to be practical without a production set-up, but the experiment has provided me with valuable insights, and has been R&D time well spent. Maybe eight-sided next time? The method does have advantages over the Birds Mouth method, mainly in providing the ability to taper wall thickness as well as diameter - all in a home workshop.

Im just beginning to come to grips with some of the complexities of the website program and associated plug-ins, so there will be gradual (but accelerating) addition of content and pages. Further down the track will come video tutorials on some interesting stuff.

Facebook and Twitter have me somewhat stumped at the moment, but that will improve with time - especially after workshop commitments are complete.

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Blog on Website

Well, with the help of Mark Bowdidge from Bowdidge Marine Designs I have got a blog up and linked to my website. Mark and I have been having many discussions about boat design and given Marks speciality in powerboat design and mine in sail boat plans, we have been able to expand each others horizons. Take some time to have a look at Marks site - I think you will be impressed.

Work goes on with the clean-up from the recent devastating floods here in eastern Australia. We still havent seen an insurance assessor, but in the meantime the work goes on. We have been overwhelmed by the kindness of people within the local and wider community. It seems that natural (and un-natural) disasters bring out the best in a large proportion of the population. We are grateful beyond expression for the support we have been offerred. Special thanks goes once again to Duckworks Magazine , Craig and Cath from C & C Shipwrights at Redland City Marina at Beveridge Road Thornlands, Queensland Australia, Graham and Judy Marsh, and to Dr Paul Truscott. It goes without saying that our children have been extremely supportive.

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New Website Currently on the steep side of the learning curve

For those of you who may have subscribed to the new website, I have an uncomfortable feeling that you may have been deluged with "New Posts" as I have been progressing with the process of learning the new software characteristics.  If so, please accept my sincere apologies.

The good news is that Im reading and experimenting diligently, and progress is starting to take place. I hope to get the Designs section and the embryo Shop looking more professional in a few days.

Concurrently, Im working on the construction of a new mast for a customer, and it promises to be a major step forward in home-workshop-buildable masts and other spars, without the need to cut Birds Mouth profiles. Many people dont understand that very small errors in the setting-up of the saw or router for Birds Mouth staves can have a huge effect on the diameter of the finished spar. Also, unless you have a very well arranged table-saw or router table, the potential for disaster is substantial...

They say that, ..pride comes before you end up with mud on your face..., but Im quietly confident that the prototype mast Im making will be faster, safer, and easier to build, and will have one REALLY substantial advantage over a Birds Mouth spar in that the wall thickness as a percentage of spar diameter will remain constant over the length of the mast. In the case of a Birds Mouth mast, the wall thickness (in percentage terms) increases as the mast tapers towards the tip - so much so that many masts become effectively solid towards the tip - not what is wanted at all! We need to keep masts light - especially as we go higher.

More to come when I get through this website business.

Ive got a number of boats under construction or repair, but design will dominate before too long.

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DDYD Mobile Website

Last night we went live with a new section of our website, optimised for mobile devices. You can access it via a link to it on our desktop home page or via the direct address http://dixdesign.com/mobile.

Screenshot of mobile website

This new site is fast and compact, to load pages and information as quickly as possible on mobile systems. It has most of the functionality of our desktop site, from researching designs through to placing an order through our secure order system.

It also gives fast access to our blogs, videos on Youtube, image albums on Flickr and to our social media pages on Facebook and Google Plus.

The boat design links for more information currently go to the design pages on our desktop site, which are best viewed in landscape mode if on a smartphone. Over coming weeks I will build compact pages for all of our designs, for better viewing of core info on mobile devices and linking to the desktop site for more detailed info.

Please visit http://dixdesign.com/mobile and cruise the new site. If you want to offer feedback on it, feel free to email your comments to me via the email links on one of our contact pages. Thanks for visiting.

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Changes in Website

This July 4th break from teaching has me working in the website. I will be porting over completely to my blog. In other words, when finished www.clintchaseboatbuilder.com will lead the web surfer to this blog which will carry the same URL. Ill have pages on the blog to capture information about my kits. I look forward to the transition as it will allow me to focus on one website, which I hope will lead to more traffic.

My website may "go out" for a little while during my transition. I wont leave you high and dry like this boat in Great Bay, NH. This is not one of my kit boats!

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New Website in Development

I will continue to post updates at this blog, but I apologize for links not working, etc. A new website is in development and will hopefully have a better way to shop not to mention a nice showcase for the boats! 

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New baysidewoodenboats com au Website almost up

For several days now, the skeleton of my new website has been up and running.

This has been a longtime coming, mainly because of my relative ignorance of things to do with computers and IT.

 My previous website was brought into existence to give people access to the vast number of construction and rigging photos which I have available, and to save me the costs and, primarily, the time involved in sending repetitive emails to enquirers needing help and illustrations - a picture being worth a thousand words, Im told...

Because of my general ignorance of matters relating to computers, I decided to use the most simple of programs, even though many people had told me it was out-of-date. That program was Microsoft FrontPage 2003, and it has served my very well indeed. I was able to follow the simple templates, and before long, I had a website which was simple to navigate (lots of basic buttons on the left-hand side of each page) and allowed me to put up many expandable-thumbnail galleries.

Despite my lack of computer knowledge, and scant knowledge of graphic design, the amateurish website has pulled in an average of between 2.7 and 3.4 million hits per annum for many years. That is page hits, by the way, not numbers of visits - but still not bad.

The new website, which is WordPress based, will display better on mobile devices, will support a shopping cart, will interface with social media (another thing I know almost nothing about), and will incorporate this blog and lots of other things - including, hopefully, a forum. That way YOU can be involved.

For those of you who have already subscribed, please be patient. I will be having a meeting with the website developer, (Julie from  http://www.360results.com.au/) on Wednesday, February 4, and that is when control of the site will be handed over to me for further action - at the moment I cant respond to subscriptions. Julie has done a great job, but has only had a few bits of content from my old website to use in filling out the page content. Once I have official control, and have learnt how to drive the site, Ill start filling up the pages.

In addition to a lot of videos and new plan information, I will be starting to run an on-line shop which will market fittings, books, boatbuilding supplies such as paint, plywood, fibreglass, fastenings, specialty glues, epoxy, and sails etc., etc., Because of my one-man-band status, the development will take a little time. As for the stock in the store, I will be partnering with a selection of very well-known companies, and the materials on offer with be of very high-quality. For overseas customers in particular, my plan sets will be available as instant PDF downloads in addition to the existing printed sets. Printed sets are nice, but the postage which I pay can be as high as AUD$36 for some of the plans. I dont charge that much, so it has a big impact on the viability of my chosen business.

Finally, I am in the process of up-grading my design software, which until now has been of the most basic type. Disregarding hull modelling, which I do in a combination of 3D modelling programs, carved half-models, and hand-drawn lines, my actual plans drawings are done individual line-by-individual line (i.e. manually) using a basic 2D CAD program - AutoDESK (the AutoCAD people) AutoSKETCH 9. Most of my plans contain between 16 and 32 sheets of A3 paper, plus illustrated instruction booklets of up to 70 pages, so the production of a set of saleable plans represents a HUGE investment of time.

My proposed path into the 21st century with regard to drafting should result in better plans presentation, and with luck, exploded diagrams of sub-assemblies.

So folks, thank-you for your patience and support over the years, and stand-by for a bit more action and communication!

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Website Being filled with More Content At Last!

Have been working too hard in the workshop, and blog entries have suffered. However, paid building jobs are almost finished, and the website is being populated with several design page entries, and an increasing number of items on the "Shop" page.

After mid-September, I will be working predominantly on designs, website content, small video production, and more regular blog entries. Ive got a stack of material from workshop jobs over the last year or so - have just been lacking time to edit photos, write copy, and publish material.

Much more to come very soon.

http://www.baysidewoodenboats.com.au/

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