C-Forum

VTBoater, please post links to the "bashing", if you would.

PE can be thermoformed (read: vacuum-molded), but is generally only used for shapes that require a lot less stretching of the material from a flat sheet into the molded shape. The narrow temperature range between "softened" and "melted" is one of the main factors that make that material relatively d...

The main factor in choosing blow molding vs. roto molding basically comes down to sales volume. Generally, blow molding is only appropriate for sales volumes of thousands of units due to the very high cost of the machine itself (compared to roto-molding machinery), as well as generally higher costs ...

As far as I know, the adjustable thwarts were only factory installed in Challengers and Odysseys, not in whitewater boats. Don't know why. Anyways, they got discontinued probably 10 years ago, don't know why on this point either.

ClassFive and Craig:

Both sort of right, sort of wrong. Most hull shapes warp differently with a narrowing or widening of the "beam at gunnel" depending on whether or not the gunnels are attached.

Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of manufacturing steps involved in making a Royalex laminate sheet, and a mistake in any one of them can cause the sheet to delaminate. Delamination is the main cause of "soft" sheets- the inside skin and the outside skin are meant to not move relative to each ot...

The problem with "plastic" boats, and by this term I take it you mean PE, is that in order to make a bigger boat that is even moderately stiff in the middle so much wall thickness has to be added that the boat becomes unacceptably heavy. Note the discontinuation of several popular Royalex whitewater...

Korad is a Spartechs trade name for their blown film acrylic.

Generally speaking, the camo outer layer in a Royalex sheet is acrylic, not vinyl, and acrylic is both a bit stiffer as well as more abrasion resistant than vinyl, so that probably accounts for the fewer observed scratches/amount of use in the referenced Spark. To the best of my knowledge, however, ...