by Capt. Flak » Tue Mar 08, 2005 2:59 am
Ok guys, I am going to take one last stab at this. There is no effort in America to change the EC12. There is no effort to remove all the old boats from the registrar. Dumas was cut off because they chose not to be a part of the class. They were given 10 years to make up their mind.
This is a one design class, but the hulls have never been true one designs because all the molds were made by different manufacturers and often times they were modified by the various hull makers for what ever reason. It might have been a square end to the keel instead of a fairing for the rudder or a different design in the transom or the width of the keel. And since each maunfacturer had to make his own mold each mold was different meant that there were as many as a dozen different hulls out there. I am sure a class historian will tell me I have my figures wrong, but the point is that they were not a true one design.
The 95 standard was not a redesign. It simply took one of the current hulls and said all new molds will be made from that one and all manufacturers will use the same plug. The problem is that they took all these new daughter plugs and gave them to the makers and said make your mold from that. And so each one of those new 95 standard molds was slightly different because no two guys was going to make his mold exactly the same. The most noticable difference was in the rudder area. Mark Rinehart has three different rudder molds to fit the different manufacturers hulls.
Then you need to look at just how old these molds are now. Skip Hickman has make several hundred hulls from his mold. I don't know enough about it, but from what I have heard, molds can get worn out.
What these guys are doing is simply preserving the class. Dave Brawner took one of the best molds and made a new plug from it. He made it about a 1/2 thick and laid up a plywood box in it so that it could sit up on a table. Then Bob Dudinsky carefully measured the plug and smoothed out a few small imperfections. He needed some pretty sophisticated equipment to measure those imperfection as well since they were so small. Again, NO REDESIGN. After that he made a new master mold. And from that, new identical molds for each of the manufacturers to use are being made.
We are simply maintaining the current hull for the future. Since all the manufactures will be making new hulls form identical molds (not making their own molds), all the hulls will be identical in shape with the only differnces being in the quality of the workmanship and the choice of wove or matt or whatever.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why the folks in the southern hemisphere think we are reinventing the wheel.
IanHB hit the nail on the head with the quote from Kimbal Livingston at Sail Magazine. It is the people of this class that make is so special. And it is these very special people who are working their hearts out to preserve and maintain this wonderful class.
Joe Walter #24