: Fiberglas foam composite one-off boat building requires even more
: tooling than glas-woodstrip building. Generally speaking you almost have
: to build a boat before you can build your boat. The hours required for
: finishing are much greater and the materials are more expensive.

George - I must respectfully disagree with you.

TOOLING: Why would you need different tooling to lay up foam strips instead of wood? All that is being changed is the core composite. Wood or foam - it requires no difference in "tooling". I will concede, that foam requires fewer power tools, since foam is softer and easier to work. Likewise, if you coat, glass fair and varnish a wooden cored hull, you are doing the same with a foam core - except substituting paint for varnish, unless you have a penchant for pink or blue colored hulls. If you are cutting your own strips, you need to figure in the cost of several bandsaw blades or circular saw blades. Strip cutting of the foam and there is virtually no wear or tear on your blades. Heck - you can even cut using a hot wire and save all the lost sawdust from the saw kerf!

TIME: Same or less with foam than with wood. A block of sandpaper and an Xacto knife and you can quickly shape and fit foam. Wood requires a plane, saw, sandpaper, etc. and a set of special router bits if you want to bead and cove the wood. Of course, you can do that with foam too.

MATERIAL COST: Again - wood (cedar) is about triple what you would pay for the same lineal feet of extruded foam. Let's see, as I recall, a 4x8 sheet of foam, 3/4 inch thick runs about $10 - $15.00 at the local lumberyard. I haven't seen anything on the low side of $25 - $30 for some red cedar boards. We won't even discuss the outrageous cost of redwood.

I had posted in an earlier thread, a detail of a guy building a power boat of twenty-some feet in length. His estimated time, including cutting of template/stations was 18 hours as I recall. Don't think you would come close in 18 hours with a wooden stripper. Heck - I don't think you could hit that time with a hard chine panel boat either.

Might want to re-read that post regarding the similarities and the benefits of foam versus wood.