another good boatbuilding material...

I find this bothersome, so much for one justice for all, and something you might want to ponder...

I suspect I surprised a few folks yesterday when I mentioned ferro-cement as being sorta kinda equal with other boat building materials. So, let me say this...

Ferro-cement is a pretty good material to build boats. Now you know that I'm tragically unhip.

In my defense, I do have quite a bit of experience with ferro-cement as, while I was in college, I worked for a yard that was building ferro-cement boats back when ferro-cement was considered a cool way to build boats.

The main advantages of ferro-cement is that it is strong, inexpensive, quick to build, and a fairly easy way to build a boat. The downside is that done badly you wind up with a bad boat... But, then again, you can say that about any boat built of any material.

Back in the days when ferro-cement was popular, a lot of folks (and not a few companies) built some really awful boats in ferro and these heinous examples of the boatbuilding trade pretty much sealed the fate of ferro-cement as a non-acceptable way of building boats.

Sad that...

Because, when you actually look at the advantages of ferro-cement it makes a lot of sense and, even more, if you were to bring it into the current century by taking advantage of such things as epoxy, for example or other modern materials.

A Ferro Endurance designed by Peter Ibold

The fact is, there are a lot of 30-50 year old, well built ferro-cement boats happily sailing all over the world. They don't look any different than non-ferro boats and, due to the pariah status of ferro boats, owners tend to keep a low profile when it comes to advertising what their boats are built of.

Bruce Bingham was my introduction and mentor where things ferro were concerned and, in my neck of the woods, his book "Ferro-cement: design, techniques, and application" was everyone's go-to guide. It might be a book you want to keep an eye out for if you care to read about how to build a good boat in cement.

The sad part of the whole ferro-cement story is that when it became unpopular and something of a pariah boatbuilding material, development simply ceased and those who may have improved and evolved materials and techniques were drawn to other materials and methods like cold-molding wood, steel/alloy, and stitch & glue...

Maybe it's about time to take another look at ferro and do some thinking.


Listening to the Turtles

So it goes...