wood v/s composite hulls?

[ptextreme]

Which is better,wood, or wood free construction,I've been told that a boat with wood in it rides better, or does it. is there a down side to composite construction?I have a 27 cc concept,and it has wood in it and I was thinking of selling and buying a new boat, but it has woodfree construction.does anyone have a newer concept?

[RBT]

wood is still the strongest, if built correctly will last longer than foam/composite. Composite if built like a properly built wood boat will last a long time, but the foamstend to turn to dust over time. Pounding and shearing.
Both absorbe water if not sealed properly.

Best boats in the world use WOOD.
Skater
MTI
Outerlimits
Triad
Progression
Tuff
Sunseaker

etc etc.

Add that if the glass crews don't know what they are doing the styrene attacks the composite and further weakens it.... for 5 bucks an hour you might wonder about the quality of the people in the lamination shop.

RT

[boatgirl 76]

That must be a up north thing There$12-18 hr here in fl !!!!

[Ted Stryker]

High Density foam will not soak water, and some choice ( used by better builders ) versions of it absord shock better than wood with a higher torsional,tensile strength, resin bonding strength... Wood is easier to work with and it's more economical to use and it does make a great boat when used properly but it falls short of modern High Density foams... Allison uses foam as does Fountain, Triads top line boat (DRX), and several million $$ high speed yachts and sail boats... I think those other guy's will eventually come around..:p :D

[Ron V]

I wouldn't really know anything about how a composite hull holds up. I've run a Klegecell cored boat for 8 seasons on some of the roughest lakes in the country, and the hull is 11 years old. When I say my boat gets used, I'm talking I use it like ski clubs use their rigs. It doesn't sit on the trailer all summer like most of the rigs in this sport. There is some exposed foam near the seam where the rear deck cap meets the transom, it is bone dry, it does not soak up water. The boat has been in the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Pontchartrain, the Fox Chain in Illinois, and Lake Geneva in Wisconsin I don't know how many times, and most of it was in far from ideal conditions. These are some of the most brutal lakes you could ever run a boat this size on. Oh yeah, Lake Michigan a couple times too, and countless wheelstands and waterski pulls. This all took place after I acquired it from a person who left it in the water uncovered before me. It has some gelcoat cracks around the corners of the dash and splashwell, none anywhere else. Find a wood-cored Hydrostream with that track record.

[RBT]

The DRX is a drag boat, weight is critical. NOT rough water longevity.
Ron V I have been on every lake you mention, Come to Canada if you want to see rough water, those "lakes" are smaller than our bays. And 90hp on a 18' boat hards pounds it.
I have seen more broken fountains than just about every other boat mfg. There is a glass shop up here that is almost solely employed by fountain.
Foam is a lot easier to use than wood.
Hydrostreams were some of the cheapest built boats I have ever seen. They failed because of how they were built, not because of what they were built out of.
Sailboats and yachts don't pound over waves like a performance boat does.
There is NO foam on the market that will last like balsa, ask Pete Heldin, ask Randy Scisim, they have tried it all.
Lastly, go see inline six. They have a 100% Mas Epoxy, vacuum bagged, all balsa post cured hydrostream in there shop..... try and break it.

RT

[LPB]

Any wood product in a boat ,will sooner than later get wet and when it dose it will rot !!Simplely put !Cores have there problems too ,but a much better choice,and BALSA is just another wood !!!It dosen't rot,it just turns to power ! Just my 2 cents worth ! From a boat builder that has been building boats since 1991,I don't know it all but learned alot in the last 15 yrs !!

[RBT]

I agree the foam does turn to powder, the foam also absorbs water, wood is still the strongest.
both will fail if wet.
and yes even skaters fail........ and they are the best there is.

RT

[Ted Stryker]

The comments that I made were examples of strength to weight ratios, and what High Density foams are you referring to that soak water..? Allison's River Racer hulls are 650 lbs and get run at well over 100 mph in white caps, my old Drag ( not meant for the rough at 557lbs. ) Allison was used in the same manner for years with 18" of jackplate... Not one single miniscule structural crack anywhere to be found, and it had been run hard for 10 years... Allison switched to composite halfway through 1987... You won't find a Bass Boat that holds up any better than an Allison, even at 600 lbs. more hull weight and less HP... They got away from wood for a reason, and I trust Darris Allison's wisdon on Hull design and structure more than anyone else... I don't think there has been one single failure in the past 18 years from usage, rot, competiton, big jackplates or high HP... There was the one that hit a rock jetty while going pretty fast and the engine got pulled off of the boat... The structure survived fine, the bolts/washers got pulled through the transom... Darris now has six transom bolts so He can defeat the Jetty next time:) .. He built a great wood cored boat, but their better now...

[Ron V]

I knew the Hydrostream comment would stir it up! :D Almost like saying something bad about Mercury :eek:. All I can say is well, there have been Rapid Crafts that didn't have blisters, and there have been 2.2 litre Mopars that never blew a head gasket. The older Hydrostreams that I have seen were built far better than the later ones. I also agree that there is not a damn thing wrong with wood if it is built correctly and sealed up good. Even if it is not, it will still last a long time. But RBT was making it sound like foam is not good, all I'm saying is that I don't see anything wrong with it and if you manage to destroy a boat that is built with it in any reasonable amount of time, then it took a lot of talent.

Ted Stryker was making his post the same time I made mine, and it made me think...I wonder how many 1987 Allisons have had to be re-cored? Probably zero. How many Hydrostreams from the late '80s have we seen for free because they need to be re-cored? Again, doesn't mean that every wood cored boat is trouble. On the contrary. My dad's 1978 Pacecraft has a balsa core and it is like the day it was built. I agree the quality of construction makes a big difference, but I've yet to see foam absorb water either. In fact I think Techno or someone did an experiment where they submerged some Klegecell for a long time and nothing happened to it at all.

[pantera1]

sthe glass and resin are more important than core material imho

[OntarioStreamin]

Balsa is the way to go!
Its 1/3 the price of composite and looks real classy too!:D
Composite is nasty stuff, it takes all the fun out of the art of boat building.:)
My 3 cents:rolleyes:

[David]

There is no comparison to the Hydrostream mass production era and the custom boats that John Spaeth is building now.

People say old Streams rot or aren't strong, but what do you expect from a 20 year old mass produced boat? Or a new mass produced boat?

Are there more broken Fountains just because there are more around or are they less strong than a similar hull from a low volume builder? Is it simply you get what you pay for?

For my money, a well built boat could be composite or balsa cored. The dash structure is wood in my SS2000 and I don't care.

I heard an alternative view at Butson boats a couple of weeks ago. They think that the West system is bad because the epoxy traps in moisture that inevitably gets into the wood. What I know for sure is that I wish I had the spare $114,000 to buy one of their 19 footers.

[mk30h]

Now this was the fastest lapstrake beauty of it's day. Seems that the materail held up fairly well considering the boat is about 1,000 years old. Of course it was by buried in mud for about 900 of those years, but not bad.;) And this is a new boat compared to the wooden boats found beneath tombs in Egypt 3,000 years.

[Ted Stryker]

Guess we'll have to wait 5,000 years to find out just how bad a$$ Allison's are... Funny how most wood cored boats ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH won't last 1/50th of the time of that Norse Ship...;) Oh yeah, Human bodies have lasted a thousand years buried in ideal conditons...

[RBT]

I never said anything is wrong with foam. I am currently building an infused boat with some foam core in it. The running surface is balsa. But don't take my word for it, look here. www.vectorply.com (http://www.vectorply.com)
There composite engineers would probably like to know more.
I am an Allison fan, but they are not the be all and end all of boat building, they are somewhere between custom and production.... and yes they do fail.
As for Fountains, yes a lot are around..... but they break and ROT because of poor lamination.

RT

[props4u2]

When was the latest failure you know of on an Allison and what year & model boat?

Lee

[RedAllison]

Yeah I wanna hear about these Allison failures RBT, I'm not talking about some moron running over a jettie and loosing a motor or someone cutting mods on the hull and then it later failing. I want to know how many true failures you know of from all composite A-boats???

If composites are so inferior too wood then I'm gonna call Boeing, Northrup/Grumman and NASA and let them know that our spaceships, stealth fighters and heavy bombers are NOT going to last long and that they need to re-engineer the superstructures of redwood and mahogany. Sheesh imagine how much better the B-52s woulda been had they only been built of fir!!! I'm restoring the stock/forearm on a 1961 Browning A5 16ga shotgun right now, I'm glad they didn't have synthetic stocks back then. I guess all my composite stocked guns wont be around to hand down too my grandkids huh??? :rolleyes:

I'll stick too buying boats built of composites and metals, not decaying PLANT MATTER!!! ;)
RA

[Ted Stryker]

I was curious of the failing Allison's also, but I let it go... I did see a broken transom once, it was barrel rolled at least times before taken a real hard dig in the water and stopping... The boat was going between 95-100 mph, and it was a 535 lbs. drag model... Red Allison, you forgot about high speed helicopter rotor blades and bazillion $ F1 cars...

[JW]

Which is better,wood, or wood free construction,I've been told that a boat with wood in it rides better, or does it. is there a down side to composite construction?I have a 27 cc concept,and it has wood in it and I was thinking of selling and buying a new boat, but it has woodfree construction.does anyone have a newer concept?

I can answer the 'rides better' question for you, as I've owned several boats recently and a few have been all-composite, both outboard and I/O.

My wood floor/balsa core boats have not 'ridden' any differently from my no-core/fiberglass liner floor boats, but there is a difference in noise. The no-wood boats transmit more water and engine noise into the cockpit as compared to the wood floor/balsa cored boats. The wood built boats dampen noise, whereas the all fiberglass boats do not. Now I'm not talking about a HUGE difference here, just noticeable.

My experience:
If I'm buying a tubing tow-pig for watersports boat that is going to get full of water all day, then I buy a boat with a no-core all fiberglass bottom and a non-skid fiberglass liner floor with snap-in carpet. I take the carpet out and store it.
If I'm buying a high performance family go-fast boat, then I want a full balsa core bottom/sides/deck with a fiberglass encased wood floor.

[Vicious]

This is starting my 8th year of doing infushion useing foam coreing instead of balsa, I still use balsa to do some one off fabricated parts and even a few boats if the client does not have the money.
15 years ago you could not get me to use foam core because I did see alot of failures metioned earlier in other posts, But the high density foam in the last 8 years have proven themselfs to me and my employies that there is no better way to core a hull.
OH YEA, High density foam does not absorb moisture like a wood cored hull!!!
Bring on the MOISTURE METER!!!!;)
Go to the post another CR 17' is concieved,I am posting pic's of one of my17' cats being built with the infushion process and FOAM CORE.:eek:

Aye either product works well, It is just a preference, Just never seen a foam boat with any moisture problems period!:p

Sparky Olsen
Vicious Custom Boats