Following repairing a skiff recently I've been asked a couple of times about boats.  Random!  The skiff was grp with a foam core.  Has anyone here made a boat before?  I'm curious about what sort of layups / thicknesses I'll find.  One of my enquiries was about experimenting with hull shapes on a powerboat so I'll guess thats a fairly robust layup!

Well ... I spent nearly three hours talking to my buddy about fibreglass and keclar/carbon composite powerboats ... Basically there's a lot of trial and error in the process ..
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Both deep V-hulls and "Flat-planers" benefit from a construction with a varied thickness. with anything up to 10 layers of standard (300 - 400 gsm) chopped strand glass in the keel area, thinning out to maybe three or four at the deck interfaces.

He has a limited experience with CF /Kevlar, but he pointed out that they never used pure CF for the hulls .. There has to be some measure of flex in the hulls, and good resistance to repeated impacts.

longitudinal stiffness is paramount, but the hull can benefit from some sideways flexing.

The number of layers and type of reinforcement depends on the boat, its construction otherwise and the intended use ..

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