Hi, I bought your book! I live in Ventura California off the Channel Islands. I have been and advocate of ferro cement boats for some time. I noticed that in a section concerning stringer ends that you say that it is better to come to a blunt end instead of a point (page 49) . Is this correct? My application for ferro cement is going to be a "fuselage" for a one man submersible "flying" sub. The ferro cement body is going to support steel structures such as the steel pressure hull and ballast tanks. The ferro cement is not going to be a pressure vessel. I will send pictures. If you have any thoughts or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. Basically the structure is a tube that is 18' long and it tapers from a 24" diameter down to a 18" Dia. Since it is a tube I think the it will end up being much stronger than is necessary. Being relatively short ( 18 feet ) the weight may be higher but in this case that is a benefit. Thanks - Brian Cox

Hi, I bought your book! I live in Ventura California off the Channel Islands. I have been and advocate of ferro cement boats for some time. I noticed that in a section concerning stringer ends that you say that it is better to come to a blunt end instead of a point (page 49) . Is this correct? My application for ferro cement is going to be a "fuselage" for a one man submersible "flying" sub. The ferro cement body is going to support steel structures such as the steel pressure hull and ballast tanks. The ferro cement is not going to be a pressure vessel. I will send pictures. If you have any thoughts or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. Basically the structure is a tube that is 18' long and it tapers from a 24" diameter down to a 18" Dia. Since it is a tube I think the it will end up being much stronger than is necessary. Being relatively short ( 18 feet ) the weight may be higher but in this case that is a benefit. Thanks - Brian Cox

Hi ! I've been making progress with my sub. I have modified my design from my original . Once the numbers were calculated it was apparent that I needed way more buoyancy to get where I need to be. I played around with various ideas until I came to the conclusion that I needed to use the ferro-cement in the most advantages way. I did not want to submit the ferro-cement to any high pressure so I was avoiding certain aspects of my design parameters. Anyway I sort of came to a compromise , what I am doing is making a large tubular structure where there is a large volume that will serve as a "soft ballast" tank. This will be used for flotation and will control submerging. I have built a working model ( 1/6 scale ) . I will send you some pictures soon. I think I'm going to have a bunch of questions about the best way to connect thru hull bulkhead fittings to the ferro-cement. Basically what I need to do is to fill this volume with compressed air thereby pushing the water out and open hole located at the bottom. (Picture in the 'News' section) Thanks Brian Cox