which hull material

Steel

Steel.

 

copper nickel

 

Stainless of course!


Just kidding...


-Tom

 

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

 

i love it

 

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

 

PLastic bottles boat:

www.theplastiki.com

 

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.

 

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.

 

the armature is 2 thousand milk crates

 

got milk?

 

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?

 

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.