I have a buddy who used to have a 100% chopper gun canoe. Weighed about
200#.


Maxprop wrote:
That must have been fun to portage.


Didn't. It rode on a ski boat trailer. The guy worked in a
fiberglass plant making bathtubs & such, and brought in a
canoe to use as a mold plug. He wanted to make a sailboat
but the canoe was not enough of a success to justify the work.


I found a website which claimed that Yamaha built a few prototype sailboats
with honeycomb aluminum coring throughout the hulls and on the flats of the
decks.

Yamaha builds some cool boats. They're currently making a 30
(IIRC) and a 33' sport boat that looks at least as fast and
more practical than anything else on the market,
unfortunately I've lost the web page & can't find it again.

There have been some "superyachts" built with structural
panels (floors & partial bulkheads, I think) with aluminum
honeycomb core.

... It was great, according to the author, but the cost would have been
prohibitive. As for bonding the skins to the honeycomb, Hexcel Skis, which
used the technology, used to laminate the skins first and then apply a
slurry of resin and finely chopped fibers to the surface, into which the
honeycomb was pressed. Both inner skins were applied simultaneously and
bonded under high pressure--I vaguely tend to recall that it was about
150psi.

The ones I read about used a different adhesive than
laminating resin to glue the core to the skin,
vacuum-bagged, then post-cured the whole structure (as I
understood the process). It's not a mature technology, but
it's hard to imagine what's coming up next by the time they
get this stuff completely figured out.

I've been working with some carbon fiber & foam core
laminations, learning enough to make a dinghy out of the
stuff. It's amazing, weighs nothing. A friend had a new
Int'l 14 hull made in a pro shop, then brought it home to
install the hardware. Could pick it up with one hand and
throw it across the yard like a huge paper plane!

Fresh Breezes- Doug King