On Dec 31 2011, 11:35*am, "Jim Wilkins" wrote:
"Ed Huntress" wrote in message

...

...
Pollard has developed some techniques for small-scale building of
aluminum boats, but they tend to be full of stringers or frames.
Unless you stretch it into compound curves, it drums and flops around,
without the reinforcement.

I can't think of many places where I'd prefer it to modern wood and
epoxy techniques for a small, one-off boat. But then, I haven't tried.
My experience in working with sheet aluminum for complex shapes has
not been happy. d8-)
Ed Huntress

It also doesn't take well to external impacts. I wish I had taken videos of
white-water rapids runners jumping in their beached aluminum canoes to pop
out the dents.

jsw

Yeah, but a boat with a dent in it will still get you home. A boat
with a hole in it "might" get you home. And aluminum doesn't dry rot,
sun rot, or stress fracture its glue joints sitting on the trailer
even after 50 years. Most of the shallow water jet guys are running
aluminum. The mud boat guys are mostly running aluminum, but there
are still plenty of stitch and glue duck boats out there because its
cheap and easy to build. Its all a trade off on what you want. When
a stitch and glue boats boot starts getting worn from running mud or
jumping beaver dams it is easy to slap a fresh layer of glass and
resin on it. Not as easy with aluminum, but it takes a lot more abuse
to get that way, and you can always mitigate that by painting the
bottom with a good quality air boat hull paint.

For that matter there are some plastic boats out there that will take
an incredible amount of abuse... BUT (note the big but) after a few
years in a UV rich environment like anywhere in the Southwest they
will get hard and brittle. Even if they don't get much use they will
crack at the "hard points."