I've been trying to learn about how bow shape effects hobby horsing,
and stumbled onto a series of pages about this boat:

http://www.setsail.com/dashew/do_paradigm.html

Which is obviously very much not the kind of boat normally discussed on
this forum, or proa_file, or any of the others. It does talk about
using aluminum to build the boat though, and I haven't really seen much
discussion about this in regard to a harry. Rob mentioned in this post:

http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/harryproa/message/5018

That the new boats will have flat bottoms...and thinking about that
post and using sheet aluminum as a building material, it got me
wondering about using aluminum for a harry.

Right off the bat, I'll say that I think if it was left unpainted, it
would take the already space ship-like appearance of a harry and make
it look like a bad 1950's sci fi movie prop. Yech.

But, reading these:

http://www.setsail.com/dashew/bare-or-paint.html
http://www.setsail.com/dashew/Hull_Maintenance.html

it got me wondering. The KSS system that is being developed for the
boats sounds like it'll be lots easier than using strip planking. And
it seems like building using aluminum would be even easier than KSS.
Plus it sounds like maintenance would be easier.

I have no idea how to estimate cost on this to get that comparison, and
I don't know if this would actually be any easier, but I thought I'd
ask the group since I couldn't really find any discussion in the past
on this topic.

Phil