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

[David Gilbert]

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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