Balsa Is At the Core of Fiberglass Boats

Many plastic and glass boats are really of sandwich construction with fiberglass skins surrounding cores of end-grain balsa wood in decks, superstructures, hull sides, and bottoms. This compatible marriage of balsa wood with manmade plastic materials was the result of development by Baltek Corporation in Northvale, NJ. Baltek’s development of its Contourkore end-grain balsa in bidirectionally flexible sheets made the material of interest to boat builders. Blocks of balsa cut across the grain and varying from 3/16 inch to 2 inches thick are glued to a loosely woven fiberglass scrim. This 24- by 48-inch drapable balsa blanket conform to the compound curves found in boat hulls; because the grain is perpendicular to the plane of the core any moisture reaching the core layer will not migrate throughout the core. End-grain balsa is used as a core material by more than 1,000 boatbuilders throughout the world in the construction of reinforced plastic boats.

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