[Public-List] Fascinating article on early day FG boat uilding

[Glenn]

David ,  very interesting story.  Didn't know the early boats were often clear.  I have heard a claim by a local boat broker that early designs had thick  hulls to alleviate the need to have frames so they gain more space inside.  Most of the early day designers and established yards did work for the navy during the war effort, so Iam thinking Whatever existed for FG state of the art must have been fairly widely known within the industry although not necessarily with The public.  Fascinating nevertheless.

Glenn
Dolce 318

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 2, 2013, at 9:35 PM, David Gilbert <bigkanu at rogers.com> wrote:

> Interesting question about early construction. My thoughts on it stem back to 1963 when a noted author, Robert Russell who owned a property on Hay Island near Gananoque, purchased an outboard powered run about of a new material called glass fibre. The river rats around Gananoque thought it hilarious and various predictions were made as to how long this vessel would last; no prediction exceeded a couple of years. Now it was an odd looking contraption as, you must remember, early glass fibre boats were clear. When Joan Mary and I started cruising to that area in the late 70s in our recently purchased new Alberg 30, we took great delight in looking into the Russell boat house as we sailed past Hay and there was the clear skinned boat as good as ever. Mr. Russell didn't care as he is blind. Accordingly, I put this information together with my view of the marketplace. With the coming of fibreglass it must have seemed like a nirvana to some entrepreneurs. You spray this stuff in a mould, break it out and voila - a hull. Now early builders were not rocket scientists and it is unlikely that they availed themselves of U.S. Navy studies on fibreglass and as the stuff looked flimsy and no one knew how long it would last, they built accordingly. As experience was gained of course, construction became more efficient. Not your scholarly study, just my thoughts.
> David
> On 1-Sep-13, at 2:23 PM, Glenn wrote:
> 
>> Ahoy!
>> 
>> So I am rather tenuously clinging to remnants of my former nautical life during  my leisure hours here in the Arabian desert  town of  Abu Dhabi , and have somehow stumbled upon a most fascinating and seeming historically accurate online writeup regarding early day FG boat building.
>> 
>> thought I would pass along the link, as it has prompted me to think about the most pressing nautical question about Albergs I can imagine. First the link:
>> 
>> http://www.proboat.com/wood-to-glass.html
>> 
>> Now to  the great Nautical mystery of the century: why did Carl Alberg and other early day FG naval architects and their builders actually produce such massively thick hulls??
>> 
>> By way of firing the first salvo so to speak, let me say Ive never really bought into the 1960's naval legend that  naval architects like Phil Rhodes, Alberg, and others simply built hulls to match the scantlings of similar size wood hulls.  This explanation aligns with the fantasy that early builders and architects didn't know about much about FG structural properties, so built to match wood scantlings, even though the US Navy apparently did serious FG research during WWII, and  produced FG craft with these same architects and builders, etc.
>> 
>> So I wonder, by the time Palmer Johnson built the first Rhodes Bounty, and Whidby followed a few years latter with the Alberg 30, why build to such heavy scantlings when they obviously knew a lot about fiberglass from their experiences in WWII, AND likely heard a constant barrage of  sales pitches from Owens Corning and other Material suppliers mentioned in the above article???
>> 
>> I ve always thought it would be fascinating to track down the history of our stoutly built hulls, So am hoping   someone  could fill in the details and maybe identify some early day references or quote surviving Naval correspondence that could tell the tale - nautically speaking.
>> 
>> Thanks much!
>> 
>> Glenn
>> Dolce 318
>> 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
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