Cold Molded

[MI Ben]

Since I'm on a posting roll...

Are cold molded wood boats a completely different animal than the wood boats of the past? Are they anywhere near the maintenance nightmare that traditional wood was or are they close to fiberglass in toughness and care?

[bufferzone]

I ran a cold molded modern sportfisherman for 7 years. the hull had been coated with resin inside and out. It might as well been cored fiberglass. I had no problems with worms or rot. I worked on a old st. augustine trawler. That hull was made by bending the planks after being steamed. Every year there were worms on the bottom and sections of bad wood on the gunnels. I believe the common use of "west system" type epoxies have limited the amount of water damage in wood boats today

[seaeagle2]

Cold molded is just a way of describing a building technique, basically it means, we built a framework, and designed it so we could attach wood or plywood to it with out bending it so much that it broke. Its what happens after that ie how it's finished / sealed, that determines the headaches or lack of headaches.

[thataway]

If a boat is cold molded with epoxy saturation of the wood strips as it is laminated, and then covered with a layer or two of fiberglass cloth, it is certainly the equal of a fiberglass hull. There are also some cold molded hulls with other glues, such as rescorcinol. Although these are very strong--if water gets into the wood, and there is no circulation etc--there can be dry rot--and one should look very carefully at these hulls. Both are superior to many conventional wooden boats (but some conventional boats are over 100 years old and still going strong.) A friend of mine who is a marine surveyor recently did a survey on my father's boat which was built in 1935 (70 years ago) and sold by my father in 1965. I thought the boat was long gone--much to my surprise it had never been refastened, and all frames and planks were in excellent condtion. Someone had loved and cared for this boat, as my father had.