Phil Brander Talks about the Aussie Blade and the New Razor

I started to think about putting pen to paper about the Razor but it occurred to me that I'd never really said much about the Australian built Blade. The Razor is meant to be an easy to build version of the much better Australian Blade hull shape. The Australian Blade was designed as a second generation Blade hull shape (if you don't count the prototype).

Some of the changes that went into the Australian Blade include the following-

The first difference that you can't miss is the asthetics which are helped greatly by the increased
round on the gunwale and foredeck. Not only does it make the boat more comfortable to sail , particularly if you like to trap in bare feet, but it helps sheds the water much more easily when you dip a bow.

On the Aussie Blade I also increased the rocker to help lift the transom a little more and at the same time I moved the apex of the rocker further forward. This was aimed at and succeeded in providing a more comfortable and forgiving ride without giving up any of the performance advantages. In fact you could push the AB (Aussie Blade ) a great deal harder as it has far greater fore and aft stability brought about by this and other changes listed below.

Some of the other changes included moving the Front beam back 80mm to increase the forward triangle as well as give a further edge off the breeze. Also the rear beam was moved forward by 50mm. This made the tramp, all up, 130mm shorter- which was better suited to the overall design and the crew compliment. When designing the Aussie Blade I was no longer restricted in
shape by the confines of using ply so I could position additional bouyancy much lower down in the hulls. This was in addition to a marked increase in overall bouancy. In addition to this there was a proportional increase in bouyancy forward of the main beam.

All in all this design is an excellent package and I wanted to find a way of bringing it to the home builder.

So the Razor was designed in order to deliver many of the benefits of the Aussie Blade but in the easy to build characteristics of a simple ply chined kayak.

A couple of years ago I built 2 18ft sea kayaks using pretty much the same method as used in building the Razor and the Razor hulls didn't strike me as any harder to build. The prototype was built from ply but it could just as easily been built from foam.

In fact it would be possible to build the Razor from either ply or foam without having to heat shape either the ply or the foam.

The Razor hull is just made up of 4 panels that are stitched together with some copper wired. These joins are then covered in glass taped inside and out. Bulkheads, and a subdeck for added
strength and stiffness, are dropped in. The gunwale is then pulled into the bulkheads.

The bulkheads and centrecase are then taped in. Beam landing, bridle and side stay fittings go in. Some little ply bridges go in to support the deck and the deck goes on.


On its maiden sail the Razor felt like it was locked on rails upwind, it had a really good feel. Off the breese you can notice how the chines help the hull generate dynamic lift. The lift can easily
be adjusted by dialling it in or out with position of crew weight, and all the time feeling rock solid
in the fore and aft plane.


The Razor will be tested in a wider range of conditions before the plans are drawn up but I 'm pretty confident that we have hit the nail on the head with the design just as it is.

In addition to drawing up plans this boat could have kits cut with a CNC machine which will make building the hulls a bitlike putting a jigsaw puzzel together. The kits will take nearly all the boring and time consumiing measuring and cutting out of the build. The hulls should start taking shape after the first few hours of work.

While it would be much cheaper than buying hulls. I always advise people to only build if you really want to build their own boat.

It has been an interesting and exciting project and I'm sure time will prove it to be a very successful addition to the F16 stable.