TOPIC: Why use wood at all?

I joined the forum a few months ago and have really been enjoying it. I've been out of boating for twenty years but hope to get back in some day. I especially like the restoration threads. I have a simple question but I'll ask it anyway. Why use wood stringers/flooring when you know they will eventually rot? Couldn't PVC plastic be used as stringers? How about sheets of plastic or fiberglass as flooring? There must be other materials besides wood that can give boats the necessary strength and support it needs. Am I missing something here? All replies appreciated. I wouldn't be offended!

you hit the nail on the head. People are doing what you are thinking about as well as sticking to the old ways. As long as you can get a bond and the material used will accept poly or epoxy it will work.
On larger work boats (lobster for example) the guys are installing PVC rub rails and staying away from wood. All sorts of composite's out there.

I agree, no need to use wood. If I coulda afforded it I might have poured my transom, but then again, there is very little wood in my boat. www.powercatboat.com/Group/FA_14t/FA_14t01.html

Frank

I would agree on a fiberglass boat, that the less wood the better. Problems arise though if you try to fiberglass over wood..... but that's a different thread.

Wood is used for many very good reasons. It is inexpensive compared to other materials, pound for pound, it is very strong when compared to other materials, it is easy to work with, it bonds to other materials very well, it floats, has tremendous ability to withstand impacts, and it isn't affected by temperature extremes.

Fiberglass stringers have been around since the 50s (Skagit pioneered the use of them) but it costs more to make it that way. Making hollow fiberglass stringers for a boat is a fantastic upgrade during restoration. A transom with a wood core is still the strongest & lightest way to build. I have a catalog from a company that sells extruded fiberglass panels with a honeycomb core. All fiberglass & super strong. Problem is, a 4 X 8 ft sheet is over 500 bucks. If you used lots of fiberglass to replace all the wood in our little old boats, they would weigh 2 to 3 times what they were designed for. That doesn't mean that improved methods should be ignored though - there is always room to improve.

I have to agree with Bruce on this one. Companies like Nida-Core build honeycomb sheets in all sizes, shapes and structural properties. They also make pourable transom materials and a myriad of composites.
The real issue is cost and availability. Composite materials are generally light, strong and wont rot, but the cost factor usually pushes builders and restorers away from them. The rot proof boat is a dream of mine as well. Unfortunately for many of us, a plywood transom covered in epoxy and fiberglass is generally all we can handle cost wise. I did pour a Nida-Core transom on my Skagit 20, and with the factory fiberglass stringers i'm half way there. Now all I need is composite decking and I could officially say she's rot proof from the deck down. The only hang up is the cost of that decking. OUCH !!!!!!

I'm using Expanded PVC Foam sheet to replace all the wood in a Manta Ray. See thread www.fiberglassics.com/glassic-forums/main-forum/manta-ray-progress for pics. There is a Piedmont Plastics www.piedmontplastics.com/locations.asp near my house and bought there direct. It added about $250 to the restoration cost but then saved about $175 not having to treat all cuts and epoxy resin on all the wood surfaces, and saved a whole lot of time.

I've used this stuff for years in construction and prefer it over plywoods...never liked working treated woods. Look up the chemical used in treated woods, arsenic & chromated copper etc. www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/31/earlyshow/health/main590994.shtml .

The PVC is 24% lighter than standard plywood and marine plywood is about 7% heavier than standard plywood. Treated plywoods can very greatly in weight, treated woods have a 20% acceptable failure to pass QA standards, 1 out of 5. The PVC is about 6% stronger than standard plywood which is about 4% stronger than treated plywood.

You can use normal wood tools and tap threads for screws, it's much easier to work with, plastic biscuits & dowel is available for joints, no saw dust, no rot(land fill life is measured in millions of years), no warping, will not absorb water, no splinters or chiping, no voids or delamination. I scuff & shape it with a drywall sanding screen on hand sander (dont clog & very fast) or wood rasp. You can even use a power grinder on it. Very easy to cut beveled edges with a jig saw and can be cut very thin.

The PVC is NOT UV resistant and needs painted, all kinds of paints well. King StarBoard is UV resistant but very heavy and double the price of PVC also nothing will stick to StarBoard.

WARNING!!! The edges of man made products are VERY sharp. Knock them down with a file or sanding screen before handling. After making a cut DO NOT use your hand to de-burr the edge, it will cut deep! I use a piece of scrap to scrape the burrs or a file, comes off easy.

Correct me if Im wroung it wont be the first time ive been But wernt Aristocraft Boats pretty much Wood Free ?? My 59 is in good shape .Ive heard and heard the other way that they did have some wood in the transom ..Did they ?? Mine is Rock Solid and looks to be original and I know it sat outside for at least 15 years without a cover ..Wonder why more companys didnt follow their lead ?? I think the boats wernt much more expensive than other boats of that era and mines about the same weight ild think of other boats that size ..

Boy oh boy is that 2004 article about treated wood inaccurate. First off, CCA treated wood is copper chromated arsentate, not arsenic. CCA treated was NOT banned. It was and is restricted for certain residential applications. It can be used and it is used in commercial construction. It also is still used in permanent wood foundations in residential applications.

There is study after study after study that has proven CCA treatment is not harmful to humans and animals and plants. The treatment is soluable in water but insoluable in the wood once it goes thru the treating process. The chemicals do not leach out of the wood, unlike ACQ treatment which leaches out like a seive.

CCA was restricted in use because of politics and the huge campaign by competing treating industry. The cost of the "new" treatments was 30 to 50% more than CCA and the entire industry realized that if they switched, they could make more profit.

Not all wood or 99% of wood as cited in the article prior to 2004 was CCA treated. There were and are dozens of other treatments such as oil borne pentachlorophenol and creosote; waterborne ACQ, ACA, ACZA, copper naphthenate, borates, and a host of others.

Andreas

The previous owner of my 17ft Skagit used honeycomb aluminum for decking bought at Boeing surplus. I have no idea of cost, but it is strong and rot free. Clint

bobo wrote:

Correct me if Im wroung it wont be the first time ive been But wernt Aristocraft Boats pretty much Wood Free ?? My 59 is in good shape .Ive heard and heard the other way that they did have some wood in the transom ..Did they ?? Mine is Rock Solid and looks to be original and I know it sat outside for at least 15 years without a cover ..Wonder why more companys didnt follow their lead ?? I think the boats wernt much more expensive than other boats of that era and mines about the same weight ild think of other boats that size ..

you are correct. aristocrafts (funliners fer sure) are wood free except for a little in the transom. houston knows all there is to know about aristocrafts, maybe he will chime in. ron

I was going to copy and paste the whole section about wood and other kinds of core materials from the article about transoms, stringers and floors on the home page, but it's pretty long.

Still, there's some pretty detailed information about pretty much all the options available.

It's on the home page, but here's the link anyway.
www.fiberglassics.com/restoration/book-part-two-transoms-floors-and-stringers

Hi Bobo, The only wood we've found on our 72 AristoCraft Nineteen is a sheet of plywood that was layed on top of the foam core, then fiberglassed for the floor.

Would love to hear from Houston - I need some gold carpet for my gold Nineteen restoration.

Well, let me chime in here. I don't have a nineteen but there are two of them across the street from my subdivision. One needs to be cleaned up but the other says free on the side but it's at the back of the lot. The one that says free has no engine or out drive and THERE IS plywood in the transom. At least where the outdrive should be. I took a close look at it the other day.

Bob

Well, that's a long a debatable question.

the O/b funliners only had wood where the motor mounted in the stern, if you unbolted the the splash well, pop off the header trim and took a look you would see two metal channels where the wood is inserted into the stern.

Giving Now-Days, you could make a boat 100% with out wood, but the cost factor would more than triple the cost of the boat, so boat manufacturers have to look at the POS (point of sale) of the market they are aiming at and try to make a good quality product, and if they miss the mark and cut to many corners they know the word would get around

Good example, one CGA response boat when called out to tow back a bayliner would set a double tow line to his center point, where each tow line would have a "slacker" that ran to the opposite side of the bow, in essence making a rather big -X- between the two, and when he was running the tow he would open the patio doors to his cabin. when ask why he would not only double up on his tow lines but run the slackers to the opposite side of the bow, he said Bayliners are well known not to put backing plates on the cleats which one good tug and they rip off and come flying back in to the tow..(which explained why the patio doors where left open)...

Which here is a little not heard of thing...

the makers of The funliners, are still to this day...making boats.

-link-
AristoCraft Boats

Houston .. Did the Funliners like mine have wood in the transom ?? I was told mines a 1959 .. How do you tell ?? I cant find a Tag .

How about some of the Herters boats? I hear they were wood free.

bobo wrote:

Houston .. Did the Funliners like mine have wood in the transom ?? I was told mines a 1959 .. How do you tell ?? I cant find a Tag .

your had what I refer to as a plaque insert of wood in the transom like mine had, if the wood did happen to rot out where the engine mounted you would just unbolt the splash well and move it forward and remove the trim cap. by my understanding by what I have been told the next step was to sand off the top of the insert area screw in a eye bolt and left the old one out and reinsert a new one and reseal and put back on the trim cap and replace the splash well.

Well, 59 I think is a little bit of a pull, if I remember right they stopped making wood in 1959 and started with fiberglass in 1960, I may be wrong but I will check with Bill.

Ok...here a long shot, one of two places.

one I have heard of was just above the drain whole in the stern, the other (where I found mine) was stamped in to the trim below the steering wheel (ahem Helm)...if it was a snake it would have bit me...that how I found it.

here is the one I had

-Link-
befor and after at-the-bottom of the page

elgindave wrote:

How about some of the Herters boats? I hear they were wood free.

believe it or not, thanks to this website there where many boats that where "wood-free", I know my T-bird didn't have any wood nore did it have any flotation foam.

bobo wrote:

Houston .. Did the Funliners like mine have wood in the transom ?? I was told mines a 1959 .. How do you tell ?? I cant find a Tag

I get to correct myself for a change...

"The Funliner 17' model was made from 1959 to 1965 both in inboard and outboard models".

(per Bill)

dug this off my piggy back btw...

When wood production was at its highest, producing a wood boat every fifteen minutes, production was stopped, not phased out, and the introduction of the 17' Funliner was put into production. Quite a decision was made, as you can imagine. As it turned out, it was quite a good decision. The boat looked totally different from the wood ones, the only similarity being the shape of the hull. Along with the Funliner came many firsts for the industry. A double hull, upright floatation, no wood used in the hull, and only one model being made to name a few. At under $1000, it was truly a family boat. The Funliner 17' model was made from 1959 to 1965 both in inboard and outboard models. To meet demands, 300 employees worked three shifts to keep up. In 1966, a model change came with the introduction of the 18' model called the 8-Teen. This was the end of outboard models for AristoCraft. Two colors were offered: turquoise and white or tan and white.
In 1968, the 8-Teen was stretched one foot to make the new 9-Teen model. The main difference was a curved transom rather than a flat one, and the addition of bow and stern rails. Colors offered were for the top color and upholstery color, offered in blue, yellow, orange, green, red, gold, and brown. The 8-Teen and 9-Teen model AristoCrafts were best known for the amount of room and the sliding hardtop. Engine selection was a Mercury 120HP, 140 HP, or 165 HP or OMC 120 HP or 140 HP. These boats also had no stringers, but used a double hull design filled with foam for strength and floatation. Production was stopped in 1979 with some boats being sold into 1980.

Boy Houston you know your Aristocraft ...L.O.L... Nice boat you had there by the way ..How many were Built ?? Sounds like tons ..I had mine given to me without a trailer . I pulled the Old V4 and put a 80HP Merc on her . With a 19 pitch she will run close to 40 .. Think a 17P might do better on her ..I like driving that boat ..It rides nice and does have bunchs of room in her ..Its great for teaching new drivers to . Very forgiving ..Thanks for the Info ..

houston's funliner...and it could turn on a dime.