Parallel Universe
Composite Troubles in Aircraft

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Bad News For Bertram

This failure involved an area of laminate failure on the port side and bottom along a length of about ten feet where the outer skin came off the core. The incident reportedly occurred in fair weather and the yacht made it back to port without sinking. Much of the core is exposed, unfortunately for Bertram, since we can get a good idea of what happened and why. Entire Article

Are They Fiberglass Boats Anymore?

It happened when I was asked by a client to attend an auction of storm damaged boats here in Fort Lauderdale. There were two minor hurricanes and one tropical storm in Florida last year, but other than to trees, I wasn't aware of much damage having occurred. In fact, during one of the hurricanes, I was out there with a video camera filming what was going on at several marinas. Not much, except for a few people that did nothing to prepare. Mostly it was these people's boats that ended up in the auction. Entire Article

Cored Hull Bottoms: The Final Word

In many of my previous articles I raised some warning flags about this latest trend toward coring boat bottoms, pointing out the potential for some very serious problems. Those warnings haven't been heeded as numerous builders jump on the cored hull bandwagon. Entire Article

Core Materials
The Hamburger Helper of Boat Building, Reviewed in the Light of History

The roots of fiberglass boat building go all the way back to the 1930's when, so far as I know, the first reinforced plastic boat was built by Gar Wood in 1936. Were it not for the Depression and W.W.II, production fiberglass boat building probably would have been initiated in the 1940's but, as it was, really began in earnest in 1960 with the pioneers of fiberglass boat building, Bertram, Hatteras and Hinckley. Entire Article

More on Cores
And Why New Boat Surveys are Becoming a Necessity.

Putting cores in boat structures is now THE thing to do. Almost all late model boats we run into have more and more coring. Decks, hull sides, bottoms. Which leads me to wonder if boat builders know why they're doing this and what the potential consequences for their future reputation is. Entire Article

Sea Ray and Balsa Core Bottoms

The debate over the use of balsa cores in boat bottoms seems recently to have come to an end when, in October, 2002, Powerboat Reports ran a piece entitled "Core Complaints".  Purporting to be an editorial, when in fact the piece ran five pages and is a full-blown article, including a response from Sea Ray to a PBR inquiry for Sea Ray's response to allegations of serious problems with the use of balsa core in the bottom of their boats 40 to 55 feet built from 1995 to 2002. Entire Article

ATC Core-Cell: A Foaming Solution?

The problems involving the coring boat of bottoms will not be going away anytime soon. However, the problem may be considerably relieved by a relatively new material called ATC Core-Cell – relatively new because the material has been on the market now for about ten years, but is only now beginning to get some serious recognition. ATC is the manufacturer and Core-Cell is the product name. Entire Article

In "Marine Surveying" category

Hi Tech Materials in Boat Building
The Pros and Cons of Space Age Materials in Boat Building.  What it Means for the Consumer

The boat building industry has entered an unprecedented period of experimentation of new materials for use in the fabrication of what were once called fiberglass hulls. Those of us who have been around the boat building scene for a while have seen a lot of new ideas and materials come and go over the years. Some have met with success, but many have met with failure, or one way or another have proved unsuitable for building production-line boats. Entire Article

New Materials Again

It seems the gentleman owns a foam cored boat himself without nary a problem. As a skeptic of foam cores, it's been lonely out here over the years in face of so much promotion and fanfare for the material. However, he overlooked the point that I never said that foam couldn't be used successfully; it can and it is. Entire Article