Velomobile Stitch and Glue

I am trying to make time to work on the seat. Haven't been able to get to my dad's house where the material is. I am guessing I might take a few times to get the seat profile down.

I am thinking about how to apply stitch and glue boat building techniques into velomobile building. For my first project I figure I want to make the body as inexpensive as possible, since I can always reuse the mechanical parts for another velomobile later. I have been thinking of simple but decent shapes for the shell.

I read that the angle on the rear end should be 12 degrees or less. The idea I have drawn up has a 13 degree angle. Pretend there is an imaginary line that extends along the edge of the velomobile and you measure at the point the rear begins to narrow. The angle from the imaginary line to the point the body curves to the rear should be less than 12 degrees, which makes for a long body if it has any width to it.

I drew two lines to represent the angle that is being measured for a visual. Like the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I decided to play with different roof lines to see what kind of effect it gave. A lower roof line in the front gave a pretty neat effect. Will need to verify measurement to see how low the top can comfortably be. I think my ideas are within being able to use the stitch and glue technique. My drawing has a width of 38 inches and a length of over 9 feet. I am hoping to make room for a back seat.

Seat-Fiberglass?

Well, I last spoke about possible methods for making the fairing. I am trying to throw out any ideas that come to mind. Nothing is dumb, some ideas are just better.

Fore instance, far north, might have been Canada, head people for an electric company were trying to find ways to remove ice from the overhead power lines in the middle of the wilderness. Everyone threw out ideas from adding heater to melt the ice, to having bears scratch their back on the poles, which would shake the ice from the wires. They played with the idea of bears scratching their backs on the poles and said what would make a bear itch their backs on power poles. They figured they could hang meat or find something that attracted the bears. Once they thought of how to get the bears to scratch their backs on the poles they tried to figure how do we get the stuff to the poles?

The first thought was to use dog sled, then snow mobiles, then finally someone says we could use helicopters. How would we get the helicopters close enough to the wires to fasten the item to the poles. They discovered the turbulence from flying helicopters over the power lines would shake the ice from the power lines. This was an exercise we used in a management class I took at the local community college and apologize for any inaccuracies.

Now to the point, I think a fiberglass seat could be built similar to this persons: http://buckybikes.blogspot.com/2008/04/seat-building-finished.html
He made a plaster shape of his own back and use that as a mold for the seat. Very cool! I think that building a wooden seat out of thin sheets of plywood and gluing them together could make a decent seat as well, if the shape is right. I think I will post on bent riders to see what a lot of the builders on their forum are doing.