Cost Of Traditional Wood Build Vs Various Modern Techniques

20 years ago I helped my cousin on his 50' salmon troller...we went to a mill,ordered a few 2.5 x 10 doug fir planks and replaced all the questionable hull planks in a day-taking our time.
He fished hundreds of miles out,was good enough for him.

If yer worried about inner rot just make sure it's done right,cousin's boat at the time was 40 years old and perfect inside.

 

Boston,

You do build a double diagonal planked boat over stringers and bulkheads, that is the way they are made.

Why not look at strip planking methods, such as convex/concave shapes, they fit easily over each other, allow for shape changes, are ridiculously strong, and cheap to build. The whole shebang is covered inside and out and there you have it, one very strong, waterproof hull, that is easy to build on your own. There is no rush to do large areas at a time (woodwork that is), and you can build as you get more money to do so....it is what I would recommmend for your build.

 

ya I was just concerned that the thickness of the material on a D/D planked might be to much for simple stingers over bulk heads

you guys gotta remember all I ever really worked on whas old wood lobster boats about 35+ years ago
very traditional plank on frame stuff that my old grand dad used to do in his retirement years

ok so making progress

 

Gee, Boston, you've been lurking around this forum nearly 2 years and you haven't built a boat yet? That's what I call patience!

 

I knew I had some time before I would be able to begin so it seemed reasonable to use that time to begin the learning process

what to build what construction technique and for what area was always the larger question

 

It's probably more like what I'd call lack of time and money....

 

oh I got time
its the money that is an ever dwindling resource

 

When I surveyed many builders in several countries about 2 years ago, the result was that foam core fiberglass is the cheapest construction method. This obviously includes the cost of labor and material. This set of builders included those specializing in fiberglass, cold molded wood, and aluminum construction.

As a couple of naval architects told me, one-off foam fiberglass wins the initial and life time cost trade studies unless someone simply really wants some other material.

Some builders differed on some details I mention below, but they all agreed with the following in general:

The cost of building a one-off mold is surprisingly low: a few man days for the hull and deck. This is due to the very simple process and very cheap materials to build a one-off mold (cut all the sections out of cheap ply or particle board, mount to a foundation consisting of cheap wood, cover with cheap door skins and then fair with cheap filler).

The cost of high quality production tooling, however, can be very high: pushing a million dollars for a boat like yours. But you are building a one-off, not a production boat.

I was surprised to discover that all of the builders admitted that cost savings due to "developable" shapes were immeasurably small. The reason is that door skins are quite flexible, and its OK to use strips and odd bits to achieve the desired shape, and then fair using soft and easily sanded filler.

Builders with highly skilled workforces -- and this may include someone like you, Boston -- find they can construct female molds pretty much as easily as male molds. Thus female molds are common for decks.

However, simple male molds can be easier and therefore cheaper in total because its easier to lay on the fiberglass, cores, and vacuum bags on a male mold than on most female molds (especially for a hull).

Also, a male mold results in a smooth interior surface that provides many advantages including easier bonding of internal structure and an easier to clean finished boat. In many cases, liners are not needed, saving substantial time, expense, and weight, as well as avoiding a common source for unpleasant smells below deck.

The exterior of the boat will need to be filled and faired, but that is true no matter how the boat is built. Filling and fairing exteriors is a lot easier than interiors.

Vacuum bags are essential for cored construction. Topsides and decks really want to be cored for insulation and for stiffness. Bottoms are often solid glass for damage tolerance and to avoid problems with core saturation.

Infusion, while getting a lot of press, does not make sense unless one has a long production run. Even then, its potential advantages are often not achieved, even by the shop that invented infusion. Specifically, the hand laminated J-105s are lighter and faster than the later SCRIMP infused J-105 boats. Stories of hulls and decks that were infused but had to be scrapped are widespread.

Careful hand layup is very effective but if and only if labor costs are low, and concern for the health of the workers is low.

Otherwise, "wet preg" using low temperature post-cured epoxy was pervasively (almost universally) recommended as the most cost effective lamination approach.

Polyester has well known problems.

Vinyl ester basically requires the entire lamination process to be performed in a very well controlled environment, both temperature and humidity. Very small changes in environmental conditions require the ratio of hardener to resin to be precisely adjusted. Small errors in the ratio prevents the resin from ever curing. This makes vinyl ester risky and usually impractical except for production boats.

Note a key reason plastic one-off boats are cheaper: you are substituting chemistry for highly skilled detailed labor.


Cold molded is substantially more expensive because each layer needs to be sanded and faired before the subsequent layer can be applied. And each layer needs to be "yacht quality" which of course is substantially more difficult and expensive than simple door skins over jigs.

Planked construction should be simply avoided and eliminated out of hand. Before you get upset at such a statement, I strongly suggest you talk to someone who is trying to keep a planked boat afloat. Its a LOT of work. They always leak: Everything that is wet swells, and everything that is dry shrinks, making keeping the water out essentially impossible. The wet places rot, and the wet places can be anywhere, and often impossible to find or to inspect. Also, they always end up smelling badly.

There are good reasons planked boats fell so completely out of fashion.


THEREFORE

Boston, you might want to consider having a professional boat builder build the bare hull and deck, and laminated structure, and then you focus on the systems and the finish carpentry, which is actually the expensive part of the boat.

 

Beside some are 100 years old and still sailing!
What kind of surveyor you are?
They always leak? Did you sail by bad weather in a plastic boat?
Do you think boat do not "leak"
From which planet are you?
Please don't make statement like that, history and reality do not give you the support needed to proof what you wrote.
Two third of your post is about crap of polyester and foam, the worst construction for long term and has to be built in an extremely well controlled environment!
You do not know your trade obviously, built boat and then come back and we talk.
As for the smell, I will not go there. You like so much Styrene?
You have bad smelling taste. I prefer the wood taste with linseed oil.

Daniel

 

ya I gotta go with Daniel on this one
Ive smelled polystyrene when it gets baked in the sun for a while and the fumes are not only incredibly bad for you but smell horrible

glass+epoxy is way more expensive than wood any day to build with and long term a foam core boat is just as susceptible to rot as wood once perforated

Ill take a cedar on oak plank on frame anyday over fiberglass and if skinned with epoxy wood laminated I believe such a boat will last far longer than fiberglass any day

I realize you meant well but foam core fiberglass is simply not an option

 

Do you mean Polyester ? Even if you do, the smell dissapears quite quickly. Gelcoat is very stable

Do you mean "balsa core" ? High density foam never rots. Thats what upsets the ecologically minded. It may fracture, delaminate, bend etc, but it never rots.

yeah yeah - Like Apex you claim that Epoxy/Strip will outlast Fibreglass and require less maintenance, well he knows better now.

Quality Fibreglass will outlast any type of wood, with lower maintanence and less work to build.

I suppose that all the production boats are built out of Fibreglass because its such a bad material they want repeat business ?? yeah, and they never landed on the moon and Elvis is still alive.

I love wood, its wonderfull to work, beautifull to use and live with, but people who claim quality Fibreglass construction wont last as long are just pushing their barrow.

 

actually I really studied the issue of fiberglass over wood and what it boils down to is that the industry can get away with fewer skilled workers and at lower wages using fiberglass molds and spray chopped strand than it can building quality wood structures

its all about the economics not the quality

the life span of Epoxy is something the Epoxy manufacturers simply refuse to talk about
so its kinda hard to suggest that Epoxy will outlast anything

yes it is easy
yes it is cheap once you get set up
and yes it takes a lot less skill
does it last and with less maintenance as compared to a quality wood build

not so sure about that

when I was a kid my grand Dad Robby and I used to repair some pretty old working down easters and those things were generally as solid as a rock
a few planks later
transom at worst and they were good to go for another life time or two

we fixed a few had been in the family for at least several generations and with only minor repairs and an engine overhaul or new

you are right as it might just boil down to preference but Ill take a woody any day

cheers
B

 

We never saw an 100 years plastic boat. Steel, concrete, wood yes, not plastic.
I saw some plastic boat sweating water like no tomorrow built in 1980.
Now what is the concept of maintenance. I maintain full time my body, my house, my wife, my car, so what about boat, they should not be maintain? Rubbish. Concept of non-sailors. For buyer on boats show listening the speech of an overweight self important dealer.
Daniel

 

I don't think it's about glass vs wood, or the smell, or the maintenance. It's about what you know, what you already have, what you can afford and perhaps what you love.

If you know how to work with wood and have access to supplies then why wouldn't you go with that? Maintenance is not a problem, if you built the boat you will certainly know how to fix it.

Ignoring a lot of free wood and buying a pile of glass and epoxy then hiring someone to build it for you when you could build a wood boat unaided is uneconomic to say the least.

 

Boston, I was responding to the title of this thread: "Cost of Traditional Wood Build .vs. Various Modern Techniques."

I agree.

... so we agree on this much. And this topic is "Cost..."

Clearly, wood can be maintained. Planks and frames replaced. Leaks fixed. No question there. Also, that a skilled woodworker like yourself can handle this, given time, which you have.

But its also undeniable that plastic boats can sit in marinas with zero maintenance for decades. Most marinas have many, many derelict plastic boats still floating and taking space. A wooden boat ignored for any extended period of time will not be in the same condition.

And I also agree with you, Boston, that if you build it, you'll also maintain it.

So, again going back to one of the first things I said, the builders who actually do this for a living, with personal and corporate experience of many decades and lots of boats built using different technologies, price out foam-fiberglass boats cheaper than any other boat building approach. That answers the question of the topic.

About the second thing I said was that people choose other approaches based on personal wishes, and those are perfectly valid.

So I'm not saying "Only a fool would build in planked wood." Nothing could be further from the truth!

Build it however you want to build it, I'm just passing on some information I got from people who really know what they are talking about.

I was surprised: I expected wood and aluminum to be cheaper, and cored glass to be most expensive. But builders in Maine, California, Oregon, Tunisia, France, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and China, ALL agreed that foam cored fiberglass was cheaper.