Ive been to sites that they say they use only wood hulls and gives you a link to fiberglass hulls. will the BB go thruogh the fiberglass as easly as balsa or wood. what are the aproved hulls for naval combat.
Fiberglass hulls from the model warship combat manufacturers are made thick enough to resist BBs. No worries there. Wooden hulls are generally made from plywood which does resist BBs for the most part. Many wood hull builders will put a layer of fiberglass over the wood to help with dent resistance. Balsa wood is rarely used in model warship combat, especially in the hulls. Some builders may use balsa for the superstructure to keep it light.
Just about any material is ok for hull construction, rules wise. It dosen't matter what the main part of the hull is made from, it's the sheeting over the penetrable area of the hull that must be made from balsa. That said, building a hull from kevlar/carbon fibre woven with tungsten steel and reinforced with titanium caprails would be considered overkill.
It sounds like you may be confused over how hulls are constructed. Our hulls are required to be made of balsa wood so they can be easily penetrated by relatively low power cannons. They still need to be strong enough to support the ship and all the components, however. To accomplish these two goals, the hulls consists of a tough skeleton and a thin, penetrable balsa wood skin. The skeleton can be made of just about anything, fiberglass and plywood being the most popular choices. With a plywood hull, the skeleton is built up out of wood. With fiberglass, the hull comes as a solid piece, and you need to cut out the sections that are required to be penetrable, leaving behind the skeleton. After you have the skeleton, you glue the balsa wood skin over the top. Thus you can have a plywood skeleton with balsa skin, or a fiberglass skeleton with balsa skin. Since all ships are required to use balsa skin, we call the hull a wood hull or a fiberglass hull based on the skeleton.
I would suggest looking at some of the ship builds in the build section of the forums to get a good visual of how ships, either wood or fiberglass, are put together.
Bingo you got it, thanks for clearing it up. I think i need to look at some build video. Thanks again!!
Not unless you really want to. You can buy fibreglass hulls from http://www.battlersconnection.com, http://www.strikemodels.com or even http://dreadnoughthulls.com. There are also some independant people making fibreglass hulls you can find on http://www.scrapcombatships.com/hulls.html
