I am currently in the US so I dont get to read the forum daily, hence the late followup.

Matt is absolutely right, the particle board will be thrown away after the hulls are done.

We will begin with 5mm strips, which will be sanded down to something like 4mm to get a relatively fair and even surface.
We did not use ply as it is very expensive and relatively hard to get at home. Price of ply+transport made ply prohibitively expensive.
Foam was an option, but sourcing and price of having the materials delivered made it very expensive. In contrast, we can go to an hardware store to sort trough their lumber and handpick what spruce we want. Here in Norway spruce is very common and not expensive at all, compared to foam and epoxy. I dont know what the laminate schedule would be like for a foam boat, but I think there might be more epoxy in a glass/foam boat than in a timber boat? Besides, working with wood is more fun than working with foam <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I would say that building in ply and building in strip is quite different. So far I think that building in strip is more time consuming.

I hope the guys updates the building blog tomorrow evening. I dont know what they will get at while I am away so I am waiting in silent agony to see what they have done with the project.