Re: fiberglass thoughts

Posted by Laszlo on Oct 13, 2005

The glass & wood combination is a composite structure. The fiberglass/epoxy provides tensile strength and abrasion resistance. The wood provides compressive strength and stiffness.

Neither by itself is as strong as the combination. To make a boat as strong as the wood/glass composite from either material would require either a lot of wood or a lot of glass/epoxy. Either way it'd be heavier and more expensive than the wood/glass composite.

If you really don't like the wood, you could use some other core for your composite. Problem is, thin marine plywood is an ideal core for small boats. It's *much* cheaper than structural foam core, much stiffer per unit weight and pretty enough to be finished bright (so you save on paint,too). And as long as it's properly encapsulated, it's just as rot-proof. Not to mention that plantation-grown okoume is a renewable resource while foam cores come from barrels of oil.

Anyone detect my bias here?

Laszlo

In Response to: fiberglass thoughts by Lenny Flank on Oct 12, 2005

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