The Deflection Caused By This Strain,
Being Accurately Measured, Was Found To Be
One-Sixteenth Of An Inch At A Point Midway Between
The Supports.
If this load, applied under such
abnormal conditions, produced so little effect, we
can safely assume that, when thus loaded and
resting on the water, supported throughout her
whole length, and the load far more equally
distributed over the whole frame, there would be
no deflection whatever.
"Lightness, when combined with a proper,
stiffness and strength, being a very desirable quality,
it is here that the paper boats far excel their
wooden rivals. If two shells are selected, the one of
wood and the other with a paper skin and deck,
as has been described, of the same dimensions
and equally stiff, careful experiment proves that
the wooden one will be thirty per cent. the
heaviest. If those of the same dimensions and
equal weight are compared, the paper one will
be found to exceed the wooden one in stiffness
and in capacity to resist torsional strains in the
same proportion. Frequent boasts are made that
wooden shells can be and are built much lighter
than paper ones; and if the quality of lightness
alone is considered, this is true; yet when the
practical test of use is applied, such extremely
light wooden boats have always proved, and will
continue to prove, failures, as here this quality
is only one of a number which combine to make
the boat serviceable. A wooden shell whose
hull weighs twenty-two pounds, honest weight,
is a very fragile, short-lived affair.
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