At 02:43 PM 2/13/01 -0800, Peter A. Chopelas wrote: > >But Ralph's mention of the post war boom of manufacturing inexpensive water >craft made the connection for me. Like all of the giant manufacturing >firms after the war, they had to find some other market or simply close >down, which many of them did. What better way to make use of all that >surplus aluminum and expensive tooling and factories that the government >had already paid for than make consumer products? >(snip) > >So likely it was Grumman that used the tooling and cheap surplus aluminum >to make canoes and light fishing boats. I would presume they were >profitable since they have retained that market for many years. That's a fair read on what happened. I'm sure that keeping skilled employees available must also have been part of the mix. Also, just after WWII, everyone thought that general aviation and small planes were going to boom. They tried, and a lot went bust there, too. Trying to find new civilian, non-aerospace markets is what sent Al Meyers to building aluminum canoes and fishing boats. Today Meyers (which now owns Michicraft) is the largest builder of aluminum canoes and one of the largest if not the largest builder of aluminum fishing boats. But there were some manufacturers there that did not derive from WWII aviation companies. I don't know about Ozark, but Michicraft started as a canoe company, but well after WWII when the aluminum canoe was booming (pun not intended). >would also put what I imagine was an innovative new way to make a canoe on >the market fairly inexpensively, opening new markets for all paddle and >motor powered water sports. I do not remember hearing or reading about >aluminum canoes prior to WW 2, perhaps others who know more can comment. It would be interesting to know who came up with the first aluminum canoe, but I'll bet it was after WWII in the "seeking new markets" scenario. There were some missteps. I have a 1948 Aerocraft that I think is built from the highly bendable 2024 aluminum, rather than the 6061-T6 which later became standard. The thing has a million dents and is not museum ready. >It also seem to me that the first wide spread us of fiberglass for both >boats hull and other consumer products also started about the post war >period as well. And if you takes Ralph's comments about plastic hulls Fiberglass came along a little later, about the early to mid 1950s. We had one of the pioneers of the technique living in this town until he died recently, and I could have asked him just when it did get going. At this point, we're talking runabouts, no canoes or kayaks. The early glass canoes were awful. In terms of canoes, anyway, aluminum probably beat everybody by 10 to 1 in sales as late as the 1970s. Today, it's probably less than 5% of the canoe market. -- Wes *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Feb 14 2001 - 10:30:03 PST
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