RE: [Paddlewise] fiberglass

>>>
A few days ago, I was visited by a fellow who is about to start
designing and building his own seakayak. He said that one way
in which his handcrafted kayak was going to differ from ordinary
production kayaks, was that he would be using fiberglass mats.
When asked what the difference was between that and my fiberglass
kayak, he said: 

Most fiberglass kayaks in production, really consists of more plastic
than fiberglass. When building these kayaks, they cut fiberglass mats
into small pieces, and then spray a mix of fiber and plastic on the
hullshape. It's simply too expensive to have a mass production of
kayaks build using larger fiberglass mats. Typically a glassfiber
kayak contains twice as much plastic as glassfiber. Anyway this spray
technique means that they have to use more material for obtaining
a sufficient strength, compared kayaks build with mats.

My question to you - is this really true? 

 best regards
  Peter Unold
>>>

I have never seen a fiberglass sea kayak made this way -- some cheap canoes,
yes, but never any sea kayaks. All the fiberglass sea kayaks I have seen use
fiberglass cloth, not mat, as the main structural element. Many are made
with a vacuum-bagging technique, which minimizes the amount of resin in the
layup. Some kayaks, like my Romany, use sheets of mat to stiffen parts of
the kayak, such as the deck, but I repeat, I have never seen one made from
chopped fiberglass.

Chuck Holst

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