, Randy

the other fabrics don't wet out clear but if you mask off the area and use pigmented epoxy,or make the fill and finish coats of epoxy with graphite then the black strip looks nice and functional. Kevlar is abrasion resistant but the fuzziness looks awful. S glass is a little more abrasion resistant than regular glass but not worth the effort unless you have to have a near clear finish,but even two or three layers of 6oz s glass will be thick and wood grain will not show that clearly but the wood color will show through fine.

I'm guessing the best combination would be one or two layers of Dynel at the highest point of wear at the stern. Maybe a 1 1/2" wide strip by two feet,and another 1" strip on top or whatever is appropriate for your boat. Dynel soaks up resin like a sponge, so be sure to press it down will some kind of peel ply,plastic wrap? nylon? It will be very hard to fair/sand the epoxy/Dynel unless the epoxy is very hard and cured, so be neat.

I talked to a salesman at Defender last year about polyester,Dynel,etc fabrics for covering little wood boats, He relayed the anecdote about a camp counselor that wanted to make some tough little boats. He made three small scale canoes,one cover with glass,another with Dynel,another with polypropylene? or polyester. After constructing these rough prototypes he dragged them around the camp behind his car! The glass one went through to the wood,the dynel one was scratched but no wood,and the other one was in between. But if you used one of these fabrics instead of glass you would easily add another 10 lbs to the boat. which is why my clc 16 weighs about 50lbs.

One of the things I like about Nick Schade's book is that he shows folks ways of maximizing the use of glass where it is needed.