You have a lot of here waiting with baited breath!

I can picture part sub 20 lbs easily. Heck, I built 3 x 28 lb wood strip Black Pearls and my SOF's (the full-size ones that is!) have been running around 25 without trying.

Here's a few of my thoughts for weight reduction: Your Dacron/FG skin could be lightened by using lighter-weight Dacron and fiberglass. For the reskinning of Mary Ann's SOF I'm going to try a peel-ply like material for less epoxy usage. From an engineering standpoint, the 1/2" plywood used on the frames is probably serious overkill. I could see using 1/4" ply or laminating each frame with individual strips. Maybe use FG-skinned foam core? The same idea could be used for the gunwales and stringers... Lash everything? A lot more work and cost for somthing that may not be as rugged. Should be light as a feather though.

It'll be fun seeing what you come up with!

Dan

: Actually I think I'm going to prototype my new SOF frame to go
: along with the skin I use. It will give me a chance to take
: pictures of the skinning process for the building manual too.
: Goal is a sub 15 lb. 17 foot kayak.

: First one will be less expensive to test the building process and
: see if it works. The final version, assuming the process works,
: ain't cheap, will cost something on the order of $500 to build
: one SOF kayak. Can do it in wood for about 1/5 of that. Also
: going to try a mod of Tom Yost's sling seat, take another pound
: out of the weight.

: Weight estimate right now looks like the frame for the final
: version will weigh around 6 or 7 lbs, ie: pretty light :)

: Yes I know this is pretty vague, the whole process is new and
: untried, don't want to lead on anyone needlessly if it doesn't
: work.

: Bill H.