: Still, if someone wants minimum weight in a kayak and doesn't mind the
: experimenting, to get resonable benifits from high tech composites
: requires high tech laminating procedures too.

: Most certainly not the cheap and easy way to get a boat

Cheap and Easy for one person may not be the same for another person.

As I see it: All technology is based on a series of steps of knowledge; one builds new technologies on top of the principles of older ones. If a person was tostart from the stone age and learn each technological discovery in the order they were invented, then it would take most of a lifetime for that person to become a rocket scientist.

Fortunately our education process glosses over the knowledge our species acquired in the stone age, bronze age, and early iron age, giving most of us a good start on modern technologies while we are children. Thus we find cases whre children are more adept with computers, for example, than their parents are.

I believe a similar thought process can be found in making boats. Particularly the small boats--canoes, kayaks, pirogues, dories, shells, etc. which we typically talk about here. At Canoecopia in 2006 there was a presentation called "Paddling Trees", put on by a leader of outdoor education from the College of DuPage (IL). I regret his name escapes me at the moment. His program consisted of video clips of the various paddle craft he had encountered in various locales around the world. They were mostly floating logs which had been hacked, burned or steamed into shape so that they could function as boats. Some would call them "dugout canoes" but in a few cases they were much larger than canoes, and in other cases they were not dug out, but rather, crudely assembled.

Since we (people reading this board) mostly use a higher form of carpentry to make our boats, what I call "tech, no log, y" I guess we have arrived at a level of capability which would have greatly surprised boat builders in primitive societies, and older times.

We seem to have arrived at out skills rather easily through reading books, watching videos, or reading help files on the internet. A century ago the cost of producing halftone illustrations for books was quite high, so the use of photographs was greatly limited to publications which might have a very large market, or which were sold at very high prices. Color photos in books were uncommon. Of course there was no internet then, or videos. What few films were around were silent. Skills were mostly learned through apprenticships and experimentation.

World War II brought a revolution in education. With skilled craftsmen off fighting in the armies, the country's women had to run the businesses and industries back home. At the same time there was a need for greater skills in nilitary personnel. So we developed "training" rather than education. While it might take years to give a rounded education to a person, you could train them in a specific skill in a much shorter time.

Now that we have more modern tools and techniques for education and training, we are able to acquire skills much more rapidly. We can train ourselves using the information which is readily published, and we can acquire numerous new skills.

We can also learn portions of a trade. For example, in 1930 if you were a boatbuilder you had to have some understanding of boat design, and before you could hang out a shingle as an independent builder you probably had to go through some apprenticeship, or make a few boats in someone else's shop. Once in busines you might assemble a boat or two each year. Ten years later you could pass a 6-week course in welding and blueprint reading and be classified as a "boatbuilder". You'd be part of an assembly team knocking out liberty ships at a rate of two a day.

Similarly, in a relatively short time we can now learn enough about almost any high tech production method to understand it, and perhaps to modify it so that it can be performed in a small shop, or at home. Apple Computers, now a leader in home computing and audio, came out of a garage. Photochemistry was incubated in George Eastman's kitchen. Henry Ford made cars in his barn. The Wright borthers worked in their bike shop on their airplanes. And even rocket science was a hobby for many people, performed with home made gadgets, for many years.

You might even say that for these people, something considered the "cutting edge" of a technology, was easy.

Obviously all of these endeavors had to be cheap enough. They were all supported by the savings of their developers. In the early days there were no sponsors, and no bankers. You had to have a working product, and orders for it, to take to the bank to get financing for bigger operations. (During the centennial of their flight, in 2003, I heard that the Wright Brothers kept accounts of their work on their airplanes, and recorded the costs in detail. They funded the whole thing out of their own pockets.)

If a person is willing to part with a portion of their income or savings in order to do some process, then they must think it is cheap enough. If they can't afford it, they won't be able to do it. Or, to turn that around, they won't be able to do something until they find a way to afford it--either by finding a new source of money, or by changing the process in a creative way which makes that process cheaper.

The quest for "cheap and easy" ways of doing things thus becomes a motivating force in the development of newer technologies.

When something seems too expensive, or difficult, to do, the creative mind analyses the problem and develops strategies to reduce the problem, avoid the problem, or solve the problem.

Bill, I know you have a creative mind, and that you have analysed this problem. You are halfway there. Now all you have to do is solve the problem of building these light, high tech boats with little money and home-grown skills and tools.

The sooner someone posts that solution, the better for us all.

Just my thoughts.

PGJ