81 Sport Restoration

[h2o-ski]

I have an 86 Sunsport, that needs to be restored.

Composite vs Wood stringers at the current price of wood ?
How many linear feet and type of wood did you use ?

Trying to decide if the cost is worth all the hassle ?
In my mind always, but the warden always has the final word! lol

I had the upholstery done in 2014

Here is the way I broke it down:
Wood vs composites
- Do you want the boat to last more than your lifetime guaranteed?
Yes - composite
No - Wood, though when done properly wood can last a lifetime or more. Cobalt used wood until the mid 90's and you don't hear much about stringer jobs on those
- Budget
None - Composite: a rough estimate for my boat was around $2000 for the material itself
Yes - Wood: bought mine when wood was on the way up. Total cost $332.78

With that out of the way, Mischief IV went composite and there were some structural changes that had to be made on the rebuild because Coosa does not have the strength of wood in the stringers. He has pics and other details in his thread. I went with wood and made structural changes to reduce the amount of wood exposure to outside areas, ie using bulkheads. Additionally any hole drilled into wood is drilled slightly oversized and filled with structural resin and then redrilled to the correct size.

Here is the breakdown of the wood I have purchased
3/4" 4x8 (1) - transom - pressure treated and age dried
2x10x16 (2) - main stringers - I bought oversized since my floor was not level may be able to get away with 2x8x14
1x6x12 (2) - side stringers
3/4" 4'x8' (3) - deck

If all you have to do is the stringers and deck, with some smart buying you could use wood and polyester resin for around $2500.

As a side note on composite, I looked into fiberglass reinforced HDPE boards (slightly more than wood but just as strong, although my catch was that the epoxy required to bond to HDPE was almost $2000