Thanks Gary,
p.s. the nails and the boat are very impressive.
As previously mentioned. I've been using Raptor Polymer (plastic) nails for over 18 months and find them easier to work with than Silicone Bronze ring nails or staples on my wooden boat builds. I'm currently 4 years into my 3rd 16' Glen-L Crackerbox build. For my second build 14 years ago I laminated my 6mm ply hull and hoop pine frame with 25mm x 8mm x 6000 strips of a Philippine timber species named Geronggang that cost me over $2000 from the Australian Furniture Timber Co Port Melbourne (no longer in business) and used metal staples to hold each one in place while the Bote Cote adhesive hardened. On completion I removed each staple which left me with thousands of fine holes to fill.
On this new build, I chose to use Philippine Mahogany (Meranti) for the laminating strips, as the grain pattern was similar to Geronggang - lighter colour but a 6th of the cost - sourced from Tile Importers in Oakleigh (Melbourne) who sell it in 6 metre planks. I machined my own with a table saw and finished them off with my 12" Ryobi thicknesser. Rather than use staples again to apply 48 laminating strips to both sides, I opted to use the US manufactured Raptor polymer brads/nails (local Raptor agent "Braford Industries" NSW) as they're twice the tensile strength of steel, half the shear strength, don't corrode, can be sanded easily, don't pull out, don't need to be removed and they accept stain. I used over 2000 of them on each side of my hull. I did some experiments prior to using the Raptor brads and chose to drive them in with a Ryobi brad gun leaving the heads protruding approx. 2mm to minimise any surface damage to the Meranti. Once the hull was sanded and stained, I applied a couple of soaking coats of Bote Cote to encapsulate the timber then 13 coats of Bondall Monocel Gold UV stabilised marine varnish from Bunnings - looks like glass. The polymer nails are virtually invisible and can only be seen if you are close up ....... around 100mm away from the surface.
My hull frame this time has been built using 6mm marine ply as the skin, plus a 100 year old recycled Oregon beam machined up for the12' x 6" x 2" stringers, 12" marine ply for the six frame members, with all of the cold moulded sheers/chines etc made from multiple laminations of 8:1 scarf jointed Meranti (because it was really easy to bend the curves I wanted in thin laminations that way). As a bit of trivia, I tried steam bending 1" x 2" Meranti strips multiple times, but found that It fractured on the sharp bends once it dried out several hours later....that's why I ended up cold moulding multiple thin laminations instead.
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The bottom of my hull has now had 5 coats of red Aqua Cote to the waterline and has remained untouched for the past 5 months while I've been rebuilding the 5 litre V8 that will power it, along with a Velvet Drive 71C FNR hydraulic transmission I've just finished rebuilding.
The Raptor brads have been so successful that I'll also be using them again for all the laminations on the deck.
Regards, Gary