Thanks for sharing your experience in various ways of boat building.

Steel hulls can be good and lets face it...
Aluminum is a bit trickier, but its mostly more of a tool game...

The fact that you have many years of experience with steel and aluminum
construction, I can understand that you think using steel and aluminum
is quite doable. But I must say that I am even more convinced not to
get involved with repairing a steel / aluminum boat after I have read
your post. The learning curve and upfront investment seems to be a bit
too high for me. This probably explains the reason why people tend to
recommend us to ask metal worker to fix aluminum boats instead of
trying to do it ourselves. If I end up having an aluminum boat that
need fixing, I would definitely sent it to a repair shop that knows how
to deal with aluminum.

In the early days, folk who were making boats
out of the stuff seemed hesitant, and they used
the same thickness of solid fibreglass as they
had been using for wood before then! ... After
these first boats didnt sink they got comfortable
and started experimenting with different ideas....
these middle boats are hit and miss and you really
need to dig, ... With newer boats they seem to
have got it right with hull thickness and
composites/sandwhiches.

Thanks for pointing out the three different periods of fiberglass
boats. Seem like I should stick with either very old fiberglass boat,
or very recent fiberglass boat. For my budget, I probably should
concentrate on very old fiberglass boat (speed doesn't matter to me).
According to other people, I probably should focus on boat that are
before the first oil crisis, and that will be before 1973. Between
checking the age of the boat and knocking at the hull to check its
condition, I am hoping that I can find a good solid fiberboat that
needs some fixing and doesn't cost a lot of money (I need to save some
money to buy a brand new gas engine).

Cant speak for wood except to say whenever i see a wooden boat i want
one but im scared at the same time. ...

I thought about building a wooden boat with fiberglass reinforcement
after watching boat building TV shows. But fixing a used boat seems to
be a cheaper and faster alternative than building a new one. And I have
an impression that fixing an old wooden boat is not really a good idea
(the whole hull may have to be replaced). Therefore, I will have to
skip wooden boat, and concentrate my search on either aluminum or
fiberglass boats.

Jay Chan