Why not fiberglass?
 

Why do boats transom made of wood? Why not fiberglass like the rest of the boat? I read about tap method or moisture meeter to check if it is rotten.

For one its about 2 inches thick, give or take a little.

a solid fiberglass transom is gonna weigh about a thousand pounds or more :D there are some composite methods such as Coosa (:eek: . . . yes . . . i said it) but i dont care for it in the high stress offshore environment.

Wood is light and strong. Light and strong = fast and durable.

Of course provided the wood doesnt get wet.

Ron

Wait!!!!!:eek:

No, seriously, weight.

And they couldn't make trim tabs long enough to get the lard-azz on plane.

It's all Fysics.

And Gravity.

Gravity, it's a law you know?

I know what gravity is, what is "Fysics":evilb:

Maybee yoo shud ask Triple Digits - he will no. :evilb:

same as p-hysics, but with less letters:cool:

way not a piece of aluminum,,,wouldnt have to be as thick,,,,glassed into the transom

Two simple reasons...

1. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

and

2. Cost.

Plywood just works. It has good weight-to-strength ratio and failures are pretty much non-existant. Composites are more rot resistant but on a well-built and properly-maintained boat, wooden-cored transoms don't rot anyway. Composites aren't totally waterproof either- ask anyone with a big cruiser that didn't keep up with gelcoat blisters- the repairs can be very expensive.

A transom could be made out of a composite material-combinations of plys, cores and honeycombs. But why? The failure rates are next to zero. For equivalent performance the weight savings would probably be single digits and the cost addition would be in the thousands.