DJR's Full Carbon Fibre NITRO Jet Ski

When DJR's Dan Rowan wanted to push the envelope of freestyle jet ski performance he realised that the only way to get exactly what he wanted would be to design and make his own hulls.

As a European Freestyle Champion, Dan already had a clear vision of what needed to change with current hull construction in order to make the perfect freestyle ski; he knew where he wanted to lose weight and where he wanted more strength and he knew what needed to be designed into the hull right from the start in order to build it up into a championship winning ski.

Although Dan and his team had composites experience from years of modifying and fitting out high performance skis, what they didn't have was experience of was building a complex structure like a jet ski hull right through from the design stage to the finished product, and so this was where Dan turned to Easy Composites.

Dan already had a proven prototype hull design, a realistic budget and an uncompromising approach to the quality and performance that the finished ski must achieve. Given these parameters we suggested working with a CAD designer to produce a solid model of all the ski components which could be turned into individual models for each for the ski mould patterns. CNC machining the patterns from a CAD design ensured the smooth lines and perfect symmetry that are almost impossible to achieve when building patterns by hand, especially at this scale.

To make the moulds we recommended our Uni-Mould tooling system which would allow individual moulds to be made in as little as one day with minimum shrinkage or distortion, important if Dan was going to maintain the perfect lines of his CNC machined patterns. The vinylester tooling gelcoat used in the Uni-Mould system also ensured the moulds would be fully compatible with the epoxy resin that would be needed to make the high spec hulls.

Meeting Dan's requirement for maximum strength and minimum weight meant maximising the fibre-to-resin ratio in the laminate, as well as making use of structural core materials within the construction and so vacuum resin infusion was chosen as the production method for the hulls themselves.

Easy Composites supplied DJR with vacuum pumps, equipment, consumables and materials for the resin infusion process and provided the ongoing support Dan needed to perfect the resin infusion process and produce genuinely expert-level carbon fibre components which met or exceeded the performance he set out to achieve.