"Ed Edelenbos" ) writes:

... The last dagger I made
was 1/2" plywood. I rough cut it with a bandsaw, sanded the profile with
various power and hand sanders, filled the voids with a glue sawdust mix and
it has about 12 coats of polyurethane on it. It works great and has lasted
(with no new coating) for about 3 years so far.

I'm a great beliver in economy. I have one 1/2" plywood daggerboard which
serves all three of my home made sailboats. After all, a person can only
sail one boat at a time. It was rounded off on the leqding edge and
tapered on the trailing edge with a sanding disk on an electric drill. The
edges were then give a couple of coats of tinted polyester resin the the
whole thing was painted with exterior latex house paint from a garage
sale. The plywood was made of some sort of dark wood, salvaged from a
packing case, possibly some sort of mahogony. When it got wedged under one
of the boats in shallow water and cracked it was repaired by pumping PL
Premium into the crack and weighting it down with bricks over night. It's
been well used and looks beat up but is still functioning fine. Photos on
my website under "Boats".

Come to think of it the rudder on a 20 footer I once owned was also made
from plywood. I broke the cheeks on it surfing downwind under full sail in
a blow and had to replace them. The cheeks were plywood.


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