Changes in construction

Laniercustomboats

Lanier Custom Boats Officer
Staff member
BBM Staff Member
BBM Sponsor
Joined
Feb 20, 2009
Location
Ft.Lauderdale, Florida
#1
Due to rising costs of advanced materials (carbon fiber, kevlar, corecell) LCB is now building our standard boats with balsa core and e glass. We cannot and will not increase our cost to customers for these materials. We took advantage of a cost neutral time to use these advanced materials, but that has changed. They really are not much better than the standard materials. With all of our testing and experience, the advanced materials do not offer a significant upgrade over the balsa and e glass. The weight savings of minimal amounts, is not worth the 5-$7,000 extra cost. We have found that balsa core is much stronger than any other coring material. We can also now use vinyl ester resins instead of epoxy with this layup. This gives us the ability to go back to gelcoats. This also saves in paint cost. Of course we still will offer all of these upgrades, but it will be up to the customer to decide on the costs that come with it. We feel it is not worth it. The boat is strong and fast no matter what process we go with. Some guys just want the fancy stuff. But we want to give our customers the best product without increasing the costs. We just feel that squeezing 200lbs out for such a hugh increase in cost is not fair to our customers. Please let us know what you think. Is it more important to say I have a boat that is carbon fiber or I paid $7,000 less for a boat that is just as good if not better than the fancy one?:first: