What happened to Wooden Boats?

[djswan]

History 101 question.

I have now met a few boatbuilders that remember the past. Similiar stories and timelines. It seems a switch was turned and everyone started building with things other then wood. It is a very general question but it would help me and maybe others to see how we got here.

I look at my woody thistle everyday and wonder what happened?

Derek

[S/V Laura Ellen]

Frozen snot and production boat building.

[djswan]

Frozen snot and production boat building.


Thank you for giving me the term "Frozen Snot" I will use it as a sword.

The thistle was a production wooden boat. State of the art. I just saw a frozen snot "Old Town canoe"

Is anyone out there making anything off the line out of wood?

[brad9798]

There is still wood boats being built ... and large ones.

I think they are becoming 'in' with the wealthy who are tired of having a boat like everyone else in the marina.

There are a lot of modern production boats using the cold-molded techniques ... Check out an issue of Motor Boating (previously called Motor Boating & Sailing).

[Tom Lathrop]

"Frozen snot" is a term coined by Herreshoff. Better he had not thought of it since his reputation gives the term undeserved respectability.

Fiberglass and other composites are actually very good boatbuilding materials. Makes no sense to keep pissing upwind. Just gets all over you know who. Better that we just build with what we like best and not waste time and energy snorting about the other guy who has different priorities.

[Dan McCosh]

A typical pleasure boat in the mid-1950s was some $1,000 a foot. Production fiberglass cut that cost to about a fifth that by the mid-1960s. That, combined with the introduction of financing, made even mid-size boats affordable to many people. By the mid-1990s, advanced composites caught up with, then surpassed, the structural qualities of wood--albeit at a significant increase in price. Might add that the true cost of wood construction is what blindsides many folks attacking a restoration project thinking that it is some kind of bargain.

[Gary E]

Dan
I dont what your definition of average is, but my 33 ft 1959 Pacemaker Sportfisherman was new at a cost of $12,000, I had the invoice. I am sure there were boats that cost more, and there might have been some less, but the Pace was not an inexpensive boat. As for who could aford them?... not many, an engineers paycheck for a year was a lot less than $10k, and the typical car was less than $4000. I dont remember what the new 59 Ford cost was, but a brand New fully loaded 67 Ford was only $3710 by 72 that same car was still less than $4000.. a new Caddy didnt cost 1/2 the price of that boat.

But so what... today all anyone cares about is,
HOW MUCH a Month ???


Edit to add....

New List price of a 1959 Ford was $3346
http://www.sportscarmarket.com/profiles/2005/January/American/index.html

[pipefitter]

I would rather build composite than to build a real wood boat out of garbage that they sell for wood. Plus,ideal boatbuilding wood doesn't always come from sustainable resources. If all the boats were traditionally wood,what would our forests look like now as if they aren't bad enough. Also,there is issue with affordable mooring,places to haul it periodically and the ever dwindling access to such for all but the elite. Modern tradeoffs are limiting to what can be successfully stored on a trailer for any great length of time. It isn't all about shortcuts and economics,it's about availability and longevity.
The way things go now,the lumber industry,and affixing the word "marine" into the quality of the proper lumber,would surely get to charge for it like anyother "marine" related material.

[JimD]

"Frozen snot" is a term coined by Herreshoff. Better he had not thought of it since his reputation gives the term undeserved respectability.

Fiberglass and other composites are actually very good boatbuilding materials. Makes no sense to keep pissing upwind. Just gets all over you know who. Better that we just build with what we like best and not waste time and energy snorting about the other guy who has different priorities.

Well said.

[djswan]

Well said BUT, I wood like to keep this thread a history lesson and not about history of the term "frozen snot"

When did the glory days of wooden boat building die and how?

Derek

[S.V. Airlie]

Derek.. here is my guess.. Wooden boats take a lot longer to build.. Fiberglass etc. well it is an assembly line... So.. sixties.

psss. mass production....cheaper.. more affordable...

[brad9798]

Builders started with f-glass in the 1950's, mainly. And mainly on smaller runabout boats.

By 1964, the Commander series by Chris Craft was ALL f-glass ... and the GOOD, bullet-proof f-glass ...

By 1974, the only wood on most production boats was perhaps the decks/superstructures.

Hatteras, for example, made nothing but f-glass boats ... back to the early 60s.

By 1976 there was hardly even any wood left on decks/superstructures.

Thus, mine is a 1964! :)

[S.V. Airlie]

First fiberglass boat in our familt was a Galaxy.. Umm.. goes back a few years. Fiberglass was so thick, ya could see through it. Next was a NE 38.. same way.
By the mid 70's though, the fivberglass was so thin, you could read a book by the light that came through it.

[merlinron]

i would think as economics dictated the need for more income, people had less time to spend maintaning thier wooden boats. i don't think the demise came out of the time it took to build them, the large boat producers had little problem finding people to work for low wages, just as they do now, rather, sales went down because of the extended costs and labor of owning a production wooden boat. some companies big enough to carry the costs, added frozen snot boats and eventually dropped the wood as accounting became more important to business practices. exactly when?....i have no idea.

[S.V. Airlie]

Still think it is the time.... Some people can't wait 2 or more years for a wooden boat when they can own one right off the assembly line..Just my opinion.

[Bob (oh, THAT Bob)]

As a novice, I'm guessing at this, but I think geometry may be a consideration (though I am sure not the primary factor); some shapes are difficult to execute in wood, either due to the necessity of ribbing (fiberglass can me a stressed skin or monocoque), or curves (you can twist wood such as sheets of plywood for a stressed skin, but convexities, i.e., localized bulges or stretches, are difficult unless you build up layers, i.e., cold molding.)

Modern looking boats look fine in 'glass. Sporty 'cats, like Hobies of all sizes, Inters, etc., work fine aesthetically in glass. I was able to get a damned fine 'glass boat on the used market for next to nothing (more based on geography than value).

Wood boats are not as fragile as I first perceived them to be before I got interested in them, in fact are often more robust against a rock, and often easier to repair. After I learned of the need for annual inspection, maintenance, and paint on the underside of a glass boat (in the water all the time), and that an annual scuff-sand and paint of a wood boat was not much more time consuming, I began to warm to wood boats. And they are warmer inside. But affordability is key. I buy many things based on value, not price, but unfortunately there is almost an order of magnitude difference in price for comparable condition 'glass versus wood boats.

There's room in this world for both, and more. I am surprised that there are not more aluminum vessels above the small sport fishing boats. Perhaps they would require more expensive tooling, perhaps also material cost. And more insulation inside. Steel boats are common when you start to approach 75' and more, wouldn't a stainless steel boat (polished, of course) be dandy? :D

[mamllc]

A glass hull can be laid up in a fraction of the time it tales to build one out of wood. Beyond that the market was ready for a change, people were tired of wood. Dont rule out the watertight bottom of a glass hull either. people tend to remember the good things about wood boats, and forget the negatives. Everything eventually comes back into style, this is true of wood boats too, fortunately they can be built today to be as maintenance free as a glass boat, bottoms can be sealed up, and good urethane varnishes can hold up as well as gel coat. They always will be more expensive though.

[Ian McColgin]

There's a good history of glass boats in "Heart of Glass." Boats like the Thistle - I'm restoring one myself - are pretty modern in that they are hot molded. There were quite a few huge kilns left over from WWII airplane production.

Glass is a terrific material. Actually, all boat materials - dimensional lumber, rotary cut lumber, cold molding, hot molding, glass, various metals, ferrocement and (believe it or not) papermache - not to mention canvass or skin, log, reed and god knows what else - all boat materials have their place.

I do wood as it's economical to the live-aboard who can better spend time than money. Wood is also more easily made comfortable for dealing with humidity and all that. Nothing like the rain forest effect of two bodies below in a small glass hull with no liner.

For me, it's really that simple.

[S/V Laura Ellen]

The advent of fibreglass caused a radical change in the marine industry. The lower cost of the production boats made boating available to the masses. This cause a drastic increase in the number of boats produced.

The decline in boat production happened when the fibreglass boats lasted longer than expected. People were keeping boats longer and longer and the production rates levelled off and then started to decline. With the declining production rates and the increase cost of the materials used in production many companies were not able to continue operation.

[Dan McCosh]

It's worth noting that there were efforts in the mid-1950s to lower the cost of wood boat building by tooling and precutting standardized parts, notably by Lyman. The effort hardly was competitive with simply slapping cloth and resin in a mold, however.
Might note that Rybovich and Van Dam, among others, contune to make high-quality production boats in wood, as a premium construction method. Also--in the 1970s, cold-molded wood hulls were the premium material for racing sailboats due to the stiffness to weight ratio. Later, high-tensile composites surpassed these efforts.

[Rational Root]

These guys are still building wooden boats...

http://www.enavigo-yachts.com/en/

[willmarsh3]

I think to some extent the appeal of the boat is its design. Flicka, Bristol Channel Cutter, and Falmouth cutters come to mind as good looking fiberglass boats. But they are hugely expensive. Some less expensive ones such as Compac are still good. Carl Alberg produced some nice designs. But personally I don't care for the looks of a lot of other fiberglass designs. Also it is hard to tell how well a boat is built in fiberglass if I don't know the brand.

If you are building the boat yourself it's easier to build it in wood, IMHO. The number of wooden boat plans is quite large.

[Wild Wassa]

I can usually bring a 20 -25 year old glass trailer sailer back to life in about 5 -8 days no matter what the condition, if it doesn't have extreme osmosis. When working on a wooden boat of the same age I can't even get the paint off in under two weeks before the intollerable slow slog starts. Then they end up under paint, so people think that they are glass anyway ... that's what has happened to wooden boats.

My friend Allan Green says, "There are two types of boat people, those who work on wooden boats and those who go sailing." Its a shame that we don't all have wooden boats the waterways would be almost free. With my own wooden boat, well Allan Green is often right ... and I often see him out on the water.

Take a road trip and go to wooden boat centres. In Australia, Paynesville, Goolwa and of course Hobart. There are no shortage of beautiful wooden boats or industry based on fixing wooden boats in these places.

If you travel overseas, in some places all that they have are wooden boats ... all in scary condition.

Warren.

[bob goeckel]

i'm building my 7th cedar/canvas canoe right now.

[Bruce Hooke]

Thank you for giving me the term "Frozen Snot" I will use it as a sword.

The thistle was a production wooden boat. State of the art. I just saw a frozen snot "Old Town canoe"

Is anyone out there making anything off the line out of wood?

Old Town Canoe Company still builds wood and canvas canoes. They have four designs (some available in multiple lengths) that are available in either wood-canvas or as "strippers," including the Otca, which is, according to their website, little changed from when it was first introduced in 1908. The price comparison is very telling. The suggested retail price on most of their wooden canoes is in the $4,000 to $5,000 range. The few that are not in this range are above the range not below it. For comparison, their Penobscot 17 in Royalex, which is a well-above average tripping canoe made from a lightweight composite that is VERY tough, has a suggested list price of $1,559. A good fiberglass canoe can be had for under $1,000.

So, I think it really does come down to the time it takes to build a wood boat versus the time it takes to build a composite boat. Canoes do show up the difference much more than larger boats. On a canoe, there is little to the boat beyond the hull, so that hull cost is a huge part of the price. On a 50' sailboat a lot more of the cost goes into interior joinery, rigging, sails, engine, etc.

Another factor may be that the skills required to build the hull of a wooden boat take longer to acquire than the skills required to lay up a fiberglass hull.

There are still various production builders of wood-canvas canoes out there. This is partly due to the fact that unlike most other types of wood boat, wood-canvas canoes require a complicated and expensive form that is easy to re-use many times over, so there is a lot of motivation to build the same design over and over rather than building lots of custom, one-off boats.

[S.V. Airlie]

Damn, I knew I should not have given my old town away... Yes, it was fiberglass..:eek: But...
Then again, it will be used and enjoyed..:D

[Bruce Hooke]

If it was really a fiberglass Old Town it probably was not worth a great deal of money on the used market. Fiberglass does not handle encounters with rocks as well as Royalex and similar materials do. A used Royalex boat is worth more, but still a good bit less than what they go for new...

[S.V. Airlie]

I know Bruce.. kinda pulling a leg after looking at the prices...
I'm glad I gave it away to someone who can use it, could not nec. afford one.. well could.. but not the point..
It will and has found a good home...

[Bobcat]

The change from wooden boats to fiberglass led to other changes. For example, the demise of the fishing resort. A good friend's parents owned a resort on Puget Sound in the 1950's with a fleet of open cedar boats. He explained to me that people then could not afford to own boats are readily and did not have the time and skills needed to maintain a boat. So the fishermen owned motors and rented boats. Once fiberglass came about, people could afford boats and didn't need to maintain them (at least that was the theory at the time). Within a decade the old style fishing resort disappeared.

[S.V. Airlie]

Bobcat.. Interesting point.. I should have thought of that myself as my brother owns a clorox bottle with no wood and I own a wooden boat with no fiberglass. We obviously teaste eachother a lot...I can see how your thoughts would make sense.

[djswan]

That Old Town I saw looked like a good stout canoe:) It was still out of my price range.:D I'm wiser again from this forum:)

[djswan]

From what I've read so far. It seems that wooden boats just took some time off during the polyester '70's Nobody had good taste back then.;)
And now we have the Wooden Boat Forum.:) Thank you

[S.V. Airlie]

I'm not sure whether it is taste perse.. I think it is cost.. etc..
By having production lines etc.. the cost comes down.. more people can afford a boat..

Then there is the wait...

[Tom Robb]

FG boats are cheaper for the same reason Henry could sell a Model T for $600.

[Bobcat]

FB are also cheaper because, although the set up is expensive, once it's in place, unskilled and cheap labor can do a lot of the work. Wooden boatbuilding requires skilled labor and for production work workers that can do it well, fast, and over and over.

[pipefitter]

Fiberglass/polyester might have used to be cheaper but it doesn't look like it is going to stay that way, being that it is a petroleum based product. There has been a scare in the FG boating industry for having to raise the production costs substantially and about what effect it will have of the buyers market which primarily consists of $30,000.00 millionaires. I see hulls of 23ft, which are not built much differently than their generic competitors selling for upwards of 60-70k for just the hull/interior! The finish is a bit better possibly but not always.Same hardware,same hands to hamburger razor sharp fibreglass potato chips waiting to destroy your flesh if you go reaching blind in the bilge or underdecks ,sides that cave in just pressing on them and warped to hell and back from even a view forgiving distance. When you tell them that you go fishing in an 18ft'r burning about 3-4 gals/day,you can almost hear them whimper.

They want to go to the other side for their poor wallet's sake but they can't,because it is not fashionable. But then again,they are paying 3-400.00 for a pair of plastic sunglasses, so who expects any logic to be the reason to add any wood to the diet?

[Andreas Jordahl Rhude]

Thompson Bros. Boat Mfg. Co. of Peshtigo, WI typically made 5,000 wooden boats per year. It was definately a production line set-up. Their peak year they made 8,000 boats! That's over 150 per week based on 52 weeks per year production or 30 per day. Cruisers, Inc. (plywood lapstrake power boats) was averaging about 3,000 boats annually during her peak years.

So, I do not "buy" the argument that wooden boat building died because of the assembly line production of fiberglass.

I did a cost comparison too. In 1959 a Glastron (all fiberglass) 17 ft. SeaFlite runabout sold for $1,495.00. A similar sized plywood lasptrake Thompson Bros. 17 ft. Sea Lancer sold for $1,315.00. A Cruisers, Inc. plywood lapstrake 17 ft. Commander sold for $1,321.00. These were all similarily equipped. These prices were listed in the "Yachting" magazine's "1959 Boat Owner's Buyer's Guide." So... the wooden boats beat out the fiberglass boat on a price basis.

Andreas

[Tom Robb]

FG isn't cheap because the parts are cheap. It's cheap because unskilled underpaid easily replaceable farm boys can crank them out quickly. It's the time and labor costs. Capitol and bulk material costs are amortized over many many units sold.

[Axel]

I love wooden boats and admire those who build them. However, boats made of other materials, have their place in business and especially, fiberglass that made sailing a sport for much more people than before.

Wooden boats are as special as taylor made suits or dresses: can you compare the price and time spent on a made-to-order dress to those of a good quality mass production outfits?

Talking about fiberglass boats, one has to admit that there are good quality ones and others not so good (as in everything else). The good ones offer safety and performance with an ever increasing investment, that anyway does not reach that for wooden boats.

Let's continue to support those that build and preserve wooden boats, but do not disregard other options.

[S.V. Airlie]

If I bought a glass boat it would be an Island Packet... Built well.. and they are a wee tad expensive becuase they are built well. Big problem....
My brother has a Hunter...... I wouldn't buy it if it was the only one for sale.:D What a piece of...... Damn I hope he isn't a member and lurking.. I try to be nice to him...

[Tylerdurden]

Aways had wood and never considered a "frozen snot" boat until recently and more from just a desire to get back on the water.
Thats why glass took over.

Its still crap though.

[Bruce Hooke]

I did a cost comparison too. In 1959 a Glastron (all fiberglass) 17 ft. SeaFlite runabout sold for $1,495.00. A similar sized plywood lasptrake Thompson Bros. 17 ft. Sea Lancer sold for $1,315.00. A Cruisers, Inc. plywood lapstrake 17 ft. Commander sold for $1,321.00. These were all similarily equipped. These prices were listed in the "Yachting" magazine's "1959 Boat Owner's Buyer's Guide." So... the wooden boats beat out the fiberglass boat on a price basis.

However those comparisons were in the very early days of fiberglass when I expect they were still trying to figure out how to produce fiberglass boats efficiently.

[Bob (oh, THAT Bob)]

FG isn't cheap because the parts are cheap. It's cheap because unskilled underpaid easily replaceable farm boys can crank them out quickly. It's the time and labor costs. Capitol and bulk material costs are amortized over many many units sold.

I think that is the best explanation for the relative demise of wooden boats, because glass and resins these days aren't cheap. Of course, they were cheaper way back when, but then so was wood.

I don't have as much problem with a glass boat made from glass fabric layups with good technique (which requires a little bit of skill, though not as much as wood) to yield a high glass content (more glass than snot, er, resin). But I can't stand anything made with just a chopper gun. And I must say, I can't *stand* the almost unavoidable small stress cracks in the gel coat over time. At least on small craft where the skin is thin enough to flex some (thick enough for no flex would be over-designed in terms of stress and weigh a ton).

[Andreas Jordahl Rhude]

However those comparisons were in the very early days of fiberglass when I expect they were still trying to figure out how to produce fiberglass boats efficiently.

Actually, this was 13 years after both Winner and Wizard started regular production of RFP boats. Garform started about 1947. Glasspar started building boats circa 1952 and by the late 1950s they were making 10,000 boats annually. Ray Greene of Toledo had been building RFP dingies and sailboats since 1937. Numerous other boat makers were using RFP by the early to mid 1950s.

Andreas

[Vincent Serio III]

My grandfather built wooden boats from 1929-1968. One of the complaints that members of the Hampton One Design fleet had was that he wasn't able to keep up with demand for the hot little boat that inspired competition. So fiberglass boats came into the fleet to meet the demand.

Michael Ruhlman's (sp?) book "Wooden Boats" has a nice exploration of the switch to fiberglass boat building. He talks about the "craftsmanship of certainty" replacing the "craftsmanship of risk." While my grandfather certainly made use of jigs and patterns to speed the process of building to something short of a production phase, his hand was seen in every boat he built. When you got one of his boats, you got a beauty. But there was risk for the buyer--when was this thing going to get done? The payoff was the finished product. Many guys were just too impatient for the process--and fiberglass boats took off.

My grandfather had a favorite saying about fiberglass boats: "They are cold like a dead body."

Hats off to you, Pappy. Classic boats from classic times.

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid225/pb4b1d9f9e2d8a11edcd6082d0f124a04/e95dea9e.jpg

[Tom Robb]

Vince, Nice picture of your Grandfather.
It reminds me of the boatshop I saw in Sorrento, Italy. One old guy using homemade tools was wearing what I'd call dress pants, nice shoes and a nice shirt to work in. Showed a certain pride in his work, I thought. I'd have been wearing overalls and work boots, but then my skills will never match his.
It's nice for you that you've got that family history to look back at.

[Vincent Serio III]

Thanks, Tom. Pappy was an immigrant from Sicily who worked his way up into the yacht club crowd. Always had a tie and cufflinked shirts and this picture was a delivery day pose. He worked in flannel shirts and khaki pants, for the most part.

[djswan]

Thank you Vincent. I will never forget the quote "They are like a cold dead body" Your post says everything.

Derek