Firstly - like everyone says - Build Light. Real Easy if you have a large lotto win per week... If not well care is needed.

My first impulse was go to with foam as the core - lots of boats are built this way, and its certainly light. But I was unfamiliar with foam and the closer I got to actual startup the more nervous I became. Was worried about the learning curve, and others that had assisted on Joan Bell had not worked with foam either.

Balsa was the next option: - we had used it before, it is after all still wood, so it just has to be good - wood is good ?. I liked the DuFlex product by ATL and after a few discussions with the designer - foam verses balsa overall weight of the boat etc. - then it got my vote. You do have to use epoxy resin, when you can use vinylester or polyester resin with foam, but what the hell epoxy is better too - just costs more. The other thing about Balsa is you have to make sure no water enters the core, we are getting around this one by cutting out the balsa and replacing the core with a piece of beech or similar.

If you spend any time at all looking around the web at building methods you will find that there is a few variations of the primary male and female mold method. Its your choice, but I am going with the majority which seems to be male mold with temporary frames. One hull will be built at a time, the exterior surface finished so its ready for top coat, lift of the hull turn it over and start on the next hull using the same temporary frames - sounds like a walk in the park to me !

Tools and Equipment

Build or buy some good scaffold - you are going to use this for many years so needs to be good and safe. On the previous boat had enough to go down one side of the boat and think this is probably sufficient, the old scaffold was made of timber, it fell apart after a while. This time I was going to build some steel scaffold (or buy it) until I discovered you could buy 44 gallon oil drums for $10.00 - way to go I reckon. In addition to the standard scaffold its a good idea to build something to allow you to access the top of hull for laminating - I mean you can't walk on wet resin, can you ? - see side bar for my answer to this

Other things - a good bench or two - one reserved for mixing resin and filler - will be one hell of a mess after a year or two. Another good bench at least 1.2m wide which will make cutting glass cloth much easier - don't go 900mm wide. Just good general hand and electrical sanding tools.

Safety

Never rush a job, just spend a few moments thinking what if ?. What can go wrong ?. If its feels like its not 100% safe, well then probably is not. STOP and find another way.