The really "Old School" boating thread

[gn7]

Those boats are really cool!

I think Joe Mandella was the first guy in the game and sometime in the 50's a few builders started to pop up. I don't think there were more than a dozen or so Hot Rod boat builders until after 59 or so. Where's Harlan when we need him. Thanks for posting those!

Joe was building planked and veneered boats like those posted, and the one with Bob Nordskog with the skier. Nordskog's Wimsey was a planked boat as well.
Heavy SOB and they were limited to the hull shape.
Around 1950 or so he build Rudy a plywood on frame battens, like you see in a wood cracker, where the plywood is a structural component of the build and there is no planking. By around 54-55, Jack Sanger, Len Schiada, Rusty and Bill Biesemeyer, Mack Stevens, Fred Wickens, Bob and Tom Patterson, were in. The game changer was after Joe's death in 56, with Rudy and his dad laying up glass hulls around 57 and selling them in 58. I think only Campbell bros & the Biesemeyers managed to make a glass boat in 59. Others started slowly getting into them around '60.

Between 1950 and 1960, there was some quantum leaps in the performance boat business. Most of them done by Joe, then later by Rudy and his dad.