On Wed, 7 Oct 1998, Edward Sullivan wrote: > Well, I like a roof over my feet thankyou. And bulkheads. The surf ski is just a warm season boat for me. It's already been put away, until next May. > And I don't > think you should use skins unless the animal died a natural death or you > ate it. The "skins" used these days are usually synthetic. Double woven nylon, polyester, and canvas being the 3 favorites. I think the greenlanders still use real skins. > I probably overestimate the delicacy of skin; Keep in mind that all of the folding kayaks are "simply" take apart skin/frame boats. > laminates make me feel > more secure. But then the right coast is older so most of the rocks are > worn smooth. There are "lots" of skin boats on the west coast (of North America), more than on the east coast. Many of these are built with a nylon skin. Builders usually buy their nylon and polyester fabric from George Dyson. Dyson's original source of nylon was the fabric that is used as the filtering material at paper pulp plants, where a fabric failure could be hugely expensive. There was recently a post to the baidarka mailing list that someone had ripped the skin of their nylon hull. It was the first torn skin of 300 boats that they had been involved in building. Personally I think my hard boats are more susceptible to damage than my skin boat. kirk *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Oct 08 1998 - 06:05:10 PDT
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