T&T: "Golden Age"

[C. Marin Faure]

The time-frame I have heard used the most when talking to brokers and  
surveyors about the so-called "Taiwan" issue is the 1970s and 1980s.   
However this was the vintage of boats that our boating budget could  
accommodate so our attention was focused on these years anyway.  I  
don't know if the manufacturing practices that were described to me  
extended beyond this period.

I mentioned packing crate and pallet wood being used by some yards as  
fiberglass structural stiffeners.  Lest anyone have a vision of the  
typical, cheap, scrap-wood packing crates we see in the US and  
Europe, the crates made in Asia often use mahogany ply.  I have been  
directing an ongoing project in Xiamen, China and the large aerospace  
company where we've been working has its own wood shop where they  
make, among other things, crates to ship parts all over the world.   
The crates this place turns out are beautiful, and the main material  
for the panels is very nice looking mahogany ply.  But.... it's not  
marine-grade ply and when subjected to moisture over a long period of  
time it would start to de-laminate, and the wood itself is probably  
not that resistant to rot if it remained in a wet, airless condition.

____________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington