which hull material

[Submarine Tom]

Originally Posted by jbehr

what is the best hull material for a sailboat of around 40 ft for a coastal/ocean going vessel in which it would be traversed through many latitudes

Steel.

[wardd]

copper nickel

[Submarine Tom]

Stainless of course!


Just kidding...


-Tom

[PAR]

Copper nickle is a great material. I've seen a fishing boat of this with no paint, just raw metal, under the LWL too. Of course it costs too damn much.

[wardd]

Originally Posted by PAR

Copper nickle is a great material. I've seen a fishing boat of this with no paint, just raw metal, under the LWL too. Of course it costs too damn much.

the best usually does
I read a report on a sail boat made of the stuff many years ago, unpainted less than .03 mm lost and self anti fouling

[peter radclyffe]

Originally Posted by Petros

Yes, I was trying to be brief, sorry about the confusion. Fiberglass is used on most production boats hulls, it is durable and low maintenance, but not very light. The more costly light weight materials like Kevlar and graphite are not used much on cruising boats AFAIK, no reason to really. These materials are much more costly and fragile and I think not suitable for a cruising boat.

I think for a cruising boat material you have fiberglass, wood, steel, aluminum. What else? Concrete? Not used much anymore I think. You could build a boat hull from almost anything: bronze, bamboo and ceramic tile, but why?

I thought it might be interesting experiment to save all the my plastic bottles I get from consumables at supermarket and see if I can melt down them to use in a boat hull, with some kind of fiber reinforcement (fiberglass, wood fiber, metal bars perhaps?). The whole hull made from waste plastic.

Once perfected I could sell the boats at jacked up prices to the environmentalists so they can relive their guilty feelings for being born. They think buying a boat made from recycled trash (rather than putting in a land fill) will help save the planet. I should be able to sell a lot of them.

i love it

[PAR]

Yes, I was trying to be brief, sorry about the confusion

I'm sorry about the confusion and barb tossing as well.

[Raggi_Thor]

PLastic bottles boat:

www.theplastiki.com

[Petros]

I have seen the plastiki before, nice design. But it does not appear the bottle are used as primary structure. There is some kind of frame surrounded by bottles, I could find no information on what holds this all together.

[PAR]

I did a quick search too for the structural aspects of Plastiki. It appears that the structure was a skeleton and bulkhead arrangement of welded plastic, with the bottles inserted into vertical holders, possibility welded too the armature. I would think this is a portion of the build many would be interested in, but with further research I found they made it a lot harder on themselves then they had too and it cost a small fortune to manufacture the boat with this set of processes, which is likely why they don't talk about it much.

[peter radclyffe]

the armature is 2 thousand milk crates

[wardd]

Originally Posted by peter radclyffe

the armature is 2 thousand milk crates

got milk?

[PAR]

Wasn't the plastic ground up, stuck in a huge, heated press and mashed into sheets so it could be welding up into bulkheads, stringers, etc?

[BATAAN]

Cheapest proven way to build a one-off is wood. Usually plank-on-frame but cold molding comes in close if you do it the NZ way without epoxy until the coatings. They use Weldwood and no vacuum bag usually, all 45 degree 1/8" lams, then epoxy/cloth sheath the outside and epoxy seal the inside. I saw two guys build a 40' ocean racer hull this way in 8 days.
The plastic boat is cool.