[KC_Lion]

Wow, back in 2001 when I was 12 we visited Santa Cruz and seeing the "Cement Boat" was a big deal.

Just how did they expect that work?

[Red Badger]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_ship

[Red Badger]

Here’s the story of ours:

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20160203/long-strange-history-of-boat

[taxcontrol]

Ferro cement boats have worked very well for their intended design, cheap and fast to build, they helped carry a lot of supplies for our military. Started in WW1 and continued in WW2. The fact that they are still around show just how durable they can be.

Now, if we were to use more modern tech, say fiber glass rods instead of steel, flexible mesh over the rods, fiber reinforced flexible concrete, coated with Grancrete or epoxy and then painted, you would a very sturdy ship that was a lot less expensive than a steel one. And while I have not run the math, with light weight concrete, you could be lighter than steel.

Might even be possible to build a boat with AAC.

[dainbramaged]

In 1971 I worked for a boat yard in Tacoma, Washington where we built a 45 foot fishing vessel from ferro-cement that my father had designed.
The framing was 1" steel tubing with several layers of 1/2" wire mesh wired to the tubing and hog-ringed about every inch to pull the mesh together. Talk about sore hands after a week of squeezing hog rings - then the plastering with cement by a special team brought in from British Columbia. It was a 5 gallon bucket brigade of wet cement (no aggregate) for several hours, and not much fun.
The customer was from Cordova, Alaska and was thrilled at the finished product - don't know if she's still in service.