You'll probably want to shoot me after reading this, but I feel it is a valid point. How can you conclude that 50/50 glass-wood is the most optimal ratio? What about wood species, direction of grain (quartersawn vs, flatsawn), type of adhesive, b&c vs. flat/beveled (affects glue area), width of strips (MANY narrow ones vs. few wide ones)? I may be forgetting some really obvious ones, however, there are most certainly more, these were just the ones that struck me as being most likely to affect the overall strength. I suggested in a previous response that 100% glass should be the strongest for any given hull weight, am I wrong? I think that perhaps you should have mentioned that the results you obtained were highly specific to the above mentioned variables. Changing them, in my opinion, would have resulted in significantly different results.

Looking forward to your response.

Mike Spence

> You got it. Half the wood; half the glass.

> Is the strongest/weight necessary? No, but knowing where the
> strongest is is necessary. The optimum is 50% glass / 50% wood by
> weight. Most boats are built near 33%/67% (6oz glass/.250" wood).
> That appears to be a bit wood "heavy" and too far from the
> max strength for my liking. The usual suggestion for making the boat
> lighter is less glass - perhaps down to 25%/75% (4oz glass/.250"
> wood) even more wood "heavy" even further from my liking.

> On the up side the usual sugestion to make boats stronger is
> to more glass - 43%/57% (12oz glass/.250" wood). That is close
> enough to the max strength for me not to worry about strength/weight.