: There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Boats have been built for
: thousands of years without epoxy and fiberglass. Instead of
: trying to invent a technology, why don't you read up a bit on
: traditional wooden boatbuilding, then you'll have a solid
: foundation of knowledge to build upon as you adapt technology to
: your use.

: This is a good book. I use it as a reference:
: http://www.amazon.com/Boatbuilding-Manual-Fifth-Robert-Steward/dp/0071628347

: As others have said, however, I would recommend using marine
: plywood and just build a stitch-and-glue with chine logs, paint
: it with marine paint, and call it good.

: m

Btw, even though it's not promoted often as it's not really permanant long term in big boats that live in the water, you can definately build canoes, kayaks and other small boats that are allowed to dry between uses out of plywood and polyester resin/glass. I've got a dinghy in my back yard that I built something like 25 years ago that was built of cheap lumber yard pine plywood with bondo filets and fiberglass taped seams inside and out using polyester resin that still looks almost like new. Has had something like a thousand hours of use too.

I'd never work with polyester resin in a basement of a house I lived in, stinks way too bad, but it'd be ok in a garage with an open door. The other advantage is you learn to work really fast since the gel time for this stuff is generally around 10 minutes or so.

Bill H.