: Last, last - oh well - if you go to 1/8" strips that ends up
: at 1/4" like many strippers. Why does this allow you to
: eliminate the glass.

Marc, you would not need glass with a boat built from 3mm, 4mm or 6mm plywood--all of which would be thinner than Tom's 1/4 inch lamination. In effect, Tom is making his own plywood, bent to the right shape as it is applied to the forms, with just 2 plies and a really strong (epoxy) glue. He could have used thinner stock! If he went with three plies of 1/16th inch his hull wouid be 3/16 thick--about 4.5 mm. Working with material that thin he could do all his trimming with a sharp knife and put away the power tools, too!

If you look at the cover of Canoecraft by Ted Moores you'll see two canoes of similar size and design, which are about 75 years apart in age. The older one has wood ribs on the inside, the newer one is sheathed in fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin. The fiberglass replaces two functions of the internal ribs. One is providing a mounting surface for each of the strips. The other is to give some strength in a direction opposite to the way the wood grain runs in the strips.

Look inside a wood/canvas canoe and you'll find crosswise ribs. That design idea came to us from the builders of birchbark canoes. When big birch trees got scarce we kept the frames and covered them with other materials:thin wood slats, canvas, paper, fiberglass cloth, polyester, and so on. The strength comes from the shape and bracing, not from the actual thickness of the skin.

crisscrossing the plies of the veneer or strips used for the layers supplies the necessary bracing to replace ribs and/or fiberglass on the inside of the boat. Glass on the outside is mostly for scratch and dent protection, although it does a nice job of holding the strips in place, too.

Just a thought

PGJ