Last year Wilderness Design was showing a composite kayak that weighed less than 30 pounds. I think it was just an engineering exercise, but it is certainly technically feasible to build light weight composite boats. Cost and durability may be limiting factors. Robert > * > After building a stitch-and-glue boat, which is essentially a composite > sandwich construction, I've been wondering about other sandwich materials. > > Lightweight airplane parts are constructed of glass (fiber- or graphite-) > around a lightweight core. Has anybody tried this with kayaks? Granted, > the abrasion-resistance needed in a boat is much higher, but it seems that a > laminate of just fiberglass, with or without gelcoat, is a really > inefficient use of the materials. I'm imagining either foam core panels > laminated on both sides with glass, or a layer of glass coated with some > sort of two-part foam, covered with a layer of glass on the inside. You > could even "tune" the lay-up in higher-stress areas with layers of kevlar or > graphite. > *************************************************************************** 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 Fri Jun 06 2003 - 10:37:34 PDT
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