Oh Tooling, Wherefore Art Thou?
Until someone more knowledgeable like Martin King drops by, I can try to cover some of the basics....
Sidebar: once the tooling for an FRP part exists, it has value, and may be sold (and re-sold) to other producers.
Like many builders, Pacific Boats, builders of the Olson 30 and then the 25, 911S, and the 34, ran low on capital in the 80's. Ericson bought up the tooling and patterns for the O-25, 911S, and the 34. Actually, there is one pre-Ericson O-34 in existance, hull #1 (well, duh). All the other O-34's and some additional 25's and 911S's, were constructed by Ericson from '88 into sometime in '90.
I consider the finishing and detailing better on the Pacific Boats products, having crawled all through one of their O-911S models. OTOH, having a boat built to Ericson standards still beats most other production boats of the era. This is a very subjective call, on my part, please understand.
All of the systems and mechanical stuff on our boat is from the shelves at the Ericson plant -- Lewmar winches with the Ericson emblem on each one, the large electrical panel that has an E-34 tag on the back, etc...
From the standpoint of design pedigree, the 911S is a "real" Schumacher design, and my 34 was scaled up from that (also with much of the shape of the Schumacher Express 34) by the builder. Most people believe that my boat is a Schumacher design, which is flattering to his memory, but not true. Luckily, the O-34 sails very well, and is rated level with the Express 34 in SF Bay area at 99.
Obviously I and my wife are very happy to have such a fast and easily-sailed cruiser. From my experience, most owners feel that way.
Back to the "traveling tooling" concept, the molds for the 911S and 34 were sold one more time, in the 90's, to a builder up in Port Townsend, Washington. He built one boat each (AFAIK) and then went under. They might still be laying around in a field somewhere....
There is a guy sitting on the tooling for the E-35 Mk3, over in the Tahoe area, last I read. PSC has the tooling for the E-32-3, E-34, and E-38-200. I often wonder what happened to the makin's for the earlier Ericsons, especially the Ron Holland 33 and 36 and the lovely Independence series, to name only a few.
Best,
Loren in PDX
Olson 34 #8
