A Gabby Hayes who never read
Posted by: g2d
on Dec-16-12 12:05 AM (EST)
Wallbridges "Boatbuilders Manual" and never paid real attention to how composite ww boats hold up with abuse that sea kayaks need ten years to accumulate. (Tsunami Rangers and heedless klutzes excepted.)
He brings out the old water soaking into the laminate baloney. I've owned a bunch of ww composite boats, FG, S-glass, carbon, Nylon, Kevlar, and I've never had a boat gain water weight.
It is hard to find a copy of the Boatbuilders Manual, so let me just say that quantitative tests were done on a variety of layups available in the 80s, and the best four layer layup was SS/KK, where S = S-glass and K = Kevlar. The S-glass goes on the outside of the boat. Kevlar is not an outside cloth.
My first c-1 was made with multiple layers of FG, and a single layer of polypropylene. It weighed over 50 pounds, and it broke repeatedly, especially underneath the stern where it thumped going over ledges. Now I have an SS/KK Millbrook C-1, weighs only about 28 pounds, and it doesn't break.