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Re: Concrete canoes / kayaks
By:Nick Schade
Date: 8/15/1998, 5:36 pm
In Response To: Concrete canoes / kayaks (Allen Williamson)

My understanding is a wire frame is coated with stiffer concrete. For example a chicken wire canoe is plastered with stucco. Concrete is not that strong by itself, it usually needs some sort of reinforcement. A male mold could be covered with a loosely woven fabric and coated with a runnier mix. This would not be much different from a way you can make fiberglass style boats.

> Greetings.

> A local TV news show had a feature on a concrete canoe weighing
> only 16 pounds, which piqued my interest since I'm always looking
> for lightweight and durable boatbuilding materials. I'm assuming that
> you could make a boat like this simply by building an outer shell
> out of plywood plus an inner shell suspended at the proper height
> (perhaps by being attached to crossbeams resting on the outer shell?).
> Concrete would then be poured into the spaces between the two forms;
> if it's runny enough, I'm assuming that it should evenly fill the
> cavity. Something tells me that the process is a bit more complicated
> than this, though... do any of the boatbuilding gurus here have any
> experience with this sort of thing, or an educated guess as to how
> it's done?

> Any help is appreciated.

Messages In This Thread

Concrete canoes / kayaks
Allen Williamson -- 8/15/1998, 10:01 am
Re: Concrete canoes / kayaks
NPenney -- 8/18/1998, 6:17 am
Re: Concrete canoes / kayaks
Mark Kanzler -- 8/18/1998, 11:46 am
Re: Engineers
Timothy - Toronto, Ontario -- 8/18/1998, 9:24 am
Re: Engineers (off topic, don't click if you don't wanna see this)
Mark Kanzler -- 8/18/1998, 5:01 pm
The bad part is I answered YES to 75%
Brian C. -- 8/18/1998, 5:42 pm
Re: Concrete canoes / kayaks
Nick Schade -- 8/15/1998, 5:36 pm
Re: Concrete canoes / kayaks
PJacobson -- 8/15/1998, 11:58 pm