TriStar Price differences

Thanks upchurch. They say marine, I always verify for myself as I've found people who really believed one thing but were sold another. Not saying that is the case here, just a sensible caveat for buyers of anything. I still have before pictures of the CDX 50 from Napa a few years ago, I'll look at them for a build comparison tomorrow.

 

It would not be cheap to cold mold a hull with cdx due to the extra labor and the amount of material you would throw away when it broke bending it,it takes a reasonable quality of plywood to even be able to use it. Do they even make cdx in 1/4"?
That it is fir plywood means it is US made so the term marine plywood is pretty much meaningless anyway, US made "marine" plywood bears no resemblance whatsoever to what the rest of the world would find acceptable.
A 50ft Tristar is huge, i cant even imagine a 60, i looked at a foam 38 a couple of years ago,a really nice roomy tri, someone else on here bought it i think.

Steve.

 

Can't agree on the marine being meaningless, we still have a mill in the area that makes it. No core voids and A/B outer surfaces. Same thickness plies all through. The older stuff is better as the trees gave them more to work with. The Nicol has beautiful wood you can't find anymore, bronze fastened.
Fir is great stuff if well ventilated and properly sealed, lots of those boats are still sailing around the world.

These days good fir is hard to find and hemlock/fir plies should be avoided at all costs. For today fir 1/4"AC has merit as it is 3 ply and you can see 2 of them, checking the edges gives and idea of the inner lamination. Some mills are better than others, I wouldn't use anything less than marine fir for anything thicker. The CDX would have used a lot of bog or glue but less than if you tried to do it with today's wood.

Meranti is a ggod fir substitute if can find marine, I found one supplier selling one grade that had the inner plys made from beetle ravaged wood. Run through the kiln so nothing living but those pin holes were all filled with glue adding weight and decreasing panel stiffness.

The 50s are boggling huge, at least the room of 2 38s.

 

Cav,could you please divulge who the mill is who makes acceptable marine grade fir plywood,i would really like to know as i actually like doug fir,the wood, its just that i object to what the mills do with it, now if someone were to build a fir panel to bs1088 that would be a nice product, but i think you would need to ship the veneer overseas as for some reason the US mills are either unwilling to or incapable of building to that standard, i have little interest in 3 ply in 1/4". I have lived in the US for over 30 years and in all that time i have only seen one sheet of fir marine ply that was good quality,a friend had it and didnt know where it came from.
BS1088 mereanti on the other hand is very readily available here at very reasonable prices and appart from being heavy is a decent choice and of course there is always okoume.

Steve.

 

I'll PM you Steve as nobody wants this stuff to disappear, I doubt they make enough to export. You'll find though it is marine to the old US standard not BS1088. That means standard peeled veneer dimensions, not thin sliced, which fir doesn't do well anyway. So 3 ply 1/4" is as good as it gets.

I love BS1088 Meranti but you have to watch your sources, I found a large local supplier trying to pass off unstamped who knows what as Hydrotech. And of course the price was to good to be true.

A thickness planer is a great tool to use in finding out what a panel is really made of. sending batch samples through layer by layer can be a help in determining a new source of supply. That caveat thing again, it is up to you to determine if a product meets your requirements.

 

Thanks Cav, ive never had anything but reliable meranti personally and ive used hundreds of sheets over 40 years but agree,, its pretty much up to us to do our own testing of ANY plywood we put in our boats. I have no problem with chinese okoume because you can do a visual inspection of everything except the adhesive which you need to do your own boil tests.

Steve.

 

Most meranti BS1088 is fine, the stuff to be careful with is the BS6566 as they take the allowed inner ply material substitution allowed ball and run with it. I'm not a huge okoume fan, light and strong but much less rot resistant than fir. Meranti is about the same strength/weight as fir at around 36lbs per cubic foot and a little more rot resistant. Sure can't argue with the easier finishing. I use both fir and Meranti depending on the application.

 

Since we slipped into the plywood subject, how much would be needed to build himself one, and how much would it cost? Let's say a Tristar 60 build in Plywood.
Thank you,
Eiasu

 

You need to get the materials list from Ed. To put it in perspective I looked into a Cross in the 42'- 44' foot range and found it would take about 250 sheets of varying thickness. I'm guessing a tristar 60 would take about 450-500+ sheets and 5-10 barrels of epoxy plus all the wood for stringers and framing. At all costs avoid any CDX or other plys that have core voids. Moisture condenses in the voids and creates the perfect conditions for rot traps. This could lead to having to replank part of the hull and wondering where the next will reveal itself. Not a cheap build but the perfect opportunity to save by buying in bulk.....having a warehouse for the build and supplies is a good idea.