Posted by Graham Knight on October 16, 2003 at 06:48:29:
In Reply to: Re: fibergals strength posted by Eric W. on October 15, 2003 at 13:34:29:
What wood are they using? And what weight of glasscloth?
With the Glen-L system most of the strength comes from the plywood, the glass is a relatively thin skin which protects the ply from moisture and abrasion.
Wood/Glass laminates can be made using much heavier layers of glass, and much lighter less durable layers of wood. A common "sandwich" at one time was a Balsawood core using end grain wood sandwiched between two layers of glass, it's quite strong but not as strong as a ply/glass laminate, not unless the glass layers were very heavy which would defeat the object of a Balsa core which was there to give light weight.
These days a polyurethane foam core is more common, the problem with Balsa is that it's not durable if water ever gets in there.
To make a proper comparison you really need to know what their wood core is and how much glass they are applying.
You could build a Glen-L boat and leave the glass off, lots of people have done this, and it would still be adequately strong, it might not last as long but it won't fall apart!
With this other manufacturer's boats I doubt they would hold together at all without the glass.