Hmm,

The wooden shape method I have evaluated. I am by far a better composites builder than a wood worker. One of the reasons I considered building the boat in composites was my lack of large scale wooden boat building compared with my hundreds of hours of composite manufacturing (and I am by no means an expert in this area).

I trust that in the hands of a skilled shaper, accurate foils can be built quickly. In my hands, nada. One must also evaluate the level of perfection needed when making high performance dagger boards and rudders. For reference, my high end glider wing cores are accurate to within 1/100 of an inch-I'm limited by the precision my inkjet printer can drop ink on paper. CNC hot-wired cores done by a professional are accurate to within 0.002". Airfoils tend to need this level of precision to function as designed-I'm sure the best shapers are accurate to within 1/1000, I've seen experienced metal workers hit those numbers by hand. My hands lack that precision on a large block of wood.

On another note, does anyone know of a good anodizer? I have a lead on inexpensive 6061 Aluminum beams, but they would need to be anodized or painted (heavy).