[Jeff_H]

That all sounds very interesting. I do have a number of questions and comments. Am I right in interpreting that the first boat was carvel planked and you simply(disassembled and) surface sealed all of the frames, timbers and planking with epoxy then reassembled the boat with a form of edge glued construction? And that the second boat was constructed the same way but from scratch? Was the second boat conventionally framed? How big a boat are you talking about and what sort of design?

I too am a big fan of wooden construction having owned a number of wooden boats over the years, oddly enough each with a different construction technique. During my most rabid wooden boat days I had considered just the technique that you are using. From the research I had concluded that you did not have enough gluing surface area in the plank seams to develop the full stength or the wood over a long period of time. This is the reason for example that ''cove and bead'' strip planking works so well. The cove and bead, besides helping to align the planking, increases the surface area of the joint. When I had looked into the glued seams it looked like scarfed edges or splined edeges would have been required.

For myself I am a fan of a number of wooden boat building techniques which would include cold molding (perhaps over a strip planked core), glued modified ashcroft and to a lesser extent, glued double planking. With all of these I would epoxy saturate the wood all sides, even if it is only a surface saturation, and sheath in a glass/epoxy or kevlar/epoxy laminate for abrasion and impact protection of the surface.

I do beleive that if done well this would produce an extremely low maintenance boat that would offer a lot of strength for the weights involved. Certainly it would be one of the least expensive ways to build a one off.

Jeff