A slightly flexible deck is only a problem if there is a much stiffer section to create stress concentrations. A deck made stiff by too much gelcoat or use of chopped strand will tend to be brittle. A blow to a stiff/brittle boat will cause many more problems than a properly designed and built flexible boat. However it is much cheaper to make a stiff/brittle boat than to construct a well-built boat that will give when stressed. The goal with the these heavy boats is to make something that will handle the typical abuse at as low a materials and labor cost as possible. One of the beauties of this system is a thick gelcoat over chopped strand will not have any cloth print-through so it will look smoother and nicer to the average buyer. It is hard to make the good quality materials and workmanship look as perfect to the uneducated eye. At 7:38 PM -0800 4/2/99, Matt Broze wrote: >Actually British kayaks are getting a lot lighter now than they used to be, >I think it is the American market influence. I weighed some many years ago >at over 75 pounds. I think there are two main reasons why British kayaks >tend to be on the heavy side. Boat over boat rescues and recessed deck >fittings (in a hand laid kayak). A thinner deck is more likely to flex and >if it flexes it may overstress some area where the flex is too great, >causing stress cracks in the gelcoat or worse. Even a tough vacuum bagged >Kevlar deck will get stress cracks in the gelcoat if it flexes too much to >the outside (putting the gelcoat under tension where it is folding). A thick >heavy deck is a stiff deck even if built with inferior materials and methods >(resin rich chopped strand mat and hand lay-up). It will stand up to a lot >of pressure from boat over boat rescues--but if it fails it may fail >catastrophically because resin is much more brittle than glassfiber. I think >the reason they use chopped strand mat (beside lower price) is that without >vacuum bagging and peel ply to remove the bag wrinkles you can't get cloth >or woven roving to conform to the bumps inside created by recessed deck >fittings. Chopped strand mat conforms well so instead of cutting a bunch of >holes in fiberglass cloth for each recess (a nightmare) they use the chopped >strand mat for the whole deck and make it thicker and heavier to make up for >the weaker material. >Matt Broze Nick Schade Guillemot Kayaks 10 Ash Swamp Rd Glastonbury, CT 06033 (860) 659-8847 Schade_at_guillemot-kayaks.com http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/ >>>>"It's not just Art, It's a Craft!"<<<< *************************************************************************** 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 Mon Apr 05 1999 - 06:44:43 PDT
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