I love ply! I was brought up on ply! I am of an age that I can still remember fights between sailors when the light weight sharpie was introduced to take over from the "solid timbered" heavy weight sharpie. The light weight guys said that their's was the way of the future, and the heavy weight guys said that the light weight ply boats were nothing but a passing fad and that they weren't "real" boats any way. The same sort of thing happened when some one had the termerity to make a hull using the "tortured ply, stitch and glue" method. The non compount curved guys said that they would spring apart like a rubber band and that they were so "stretched" that if they were hit on the water they would explode. It is still a fact that one of the most structurally strong, per weight/mass materials that has ever been applied to the construction of "boats" is marine ply, and now by using ply and incorporation the "west system' of inpregnation of epoxy resin, the strength and usable life of the product is right up there with the highest of the high tech' materials available on the market today. One area where it cannot match "cold moulding" though, is in the incorporation of some of the shapes that are obtainable with "glass" for the incorporation of better hydrodynamics. some of these direction changes are just to acute to make in ply, but nothing that other compromises in the design can't overcome. The one big area that makes it unsuitable in "production" today is that it is "time consuming" in it's application, (time is money etc), so although it rules itself out for use as a "mass" production material, it is, and will be for many years to come, an ideal material for home construction, where "time" is not a relevent cost factor.
Darryl J Barrett