> >What I have often wondered is why I have never seen an aluminum sea kayak? >The toughest, badest power boats on the west coast here are made out of >welded aluminum. Folders use it for their framing. Grumman has made aluminum >canoes for years. So why not kayaks? Too expensive? Too hard to work with? >Corrosion factors? Has anybody ever marketed one? I envision a nice welded, >hard chined unit. No issues running that up on the beach..... I imagine putting my ungloved hand on the deck on a hot summer day . . . ouch! I used to do some aluminum fabrication, and thought about the idea. Could be done, I suppose, but there are some tricky curves in a home shop environment -- but then, I don't remember people ever building aluminum canoes at home from scratch, either. Really, I can't answer why it isn't done commercially. There are not a lot of aluminum canoe makers around any more, but one of them is in the next town. I bounced a similar question off a gal that works there, once, and she basically said they hadn't investigated the market, and that kayaks are pretty well out of the market they deal with. I imagine that kayaks might be pretty labor intensive for a short run, as well. So -- tough, yes. They don't call Grummans "ironboats" for nothing . . . Easy and cheap to build? Probably not, unless you have huge investment in tools and dies -- and you still would have difficulty getting the smooth compound curves we're familiar with in both plastic and fiberglass. And, remembering the kind of weights we used to have with ironboats, glass or plastic or wood is probably lighter. -- Wes --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wes Boyd's Kayak Place NEW URL! -- http://www.kayakplace.com Kayaks for Big Guys (And Gals) | Trip Reports | Places To Go | Boats & Gear --------------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** 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 Thu Feb 27 2003 - 15:34:04 PST
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