OK, here's revision two. I usually try to cover all the angles when I reply to something, and I just glossed over the wood bending issue. I said it's "problematic". I should have said "you'll almost certainly break the longerons when you ask them to make a very sharp bend like 6-8" without gently coercing them into the right shape over time, or steaming. I broke one of mine stretching it 3".
I said laminating was "easily done", but after thinking about it, I was kidding myself about that. Even if you were trying to laminate a few strips into a perfectly straight square cross-section piece it would be a lot more time consuming, but lamininating wood strips into a shape that is bent in two different dimensions would be an excercise in frustration. Imagine trying to keep all those slippery strips aligned with each other while trying to maintain a desired shape. While it would be tough to do the top longerons that way, it could be done since you could clamp them to your benchtop while forming them. But now imagine how to bend the bottom longerons, which you'll be trying to "in space" up above the workbench while forming the bottom of your boat, and you'll have a really frutrating month ahead of you. Steaming is probably the way to do it. Dr . Dean used a vegetable steamer and a long piece of 4" PVC pipe to steam his, and said it was remarkably easy. I'd think you'd have to either form them into shape and let them dry before T-88'ing them together, or use a glue that doesn't mind wet wood (seems like there is one, but I forget which one it is). Having said all of this, if you are a magician and can laminate your longerons into the proper shape, they would be stronger than pure wood because imperfections would be negated by other layers. But since KRs don't fall out of the sky because the longerons break in flight, that's not a deciding factor... Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
