Re: Fiberglass Pax 20

Posted by Mark Camp on Jan 29, 2005

The nice thing about cold-molded plywood is that you can get doubly-curved surfaces ("non-developable" surfaces) without torturing plywood. You don't have to bend plywood when you do cold-molded. The plywood is fabricated on the mold already in its final shape.

I think the fascination of it, if you are coming from S and G and are keen on even greater extremes of light weight/high strength, is that a doubly curved surface has more stiffness with less weight than an S and G panel. (See the egg and the automobile for examples of exploiting this principle).

So, cold-molded gives you more freedom to make an optimal hull and deck shape, while allowing you to reduce weight by reducing internal framing or scantlings (or both).

It was very popular in high-performance craft in the 40's and 50's especially, before balsa-core, foam core came along.

It is a million times harder to do than S and G, though.

In Response to: Re: Fiberglass Pax 20 by LeeG on Jan 28, 2005

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