rotrax
Well-known member
I can see the point you guys are making but it doesn't always ring true, I know of at least one 'brickie' that I'd sooner ask her to design and build me a house than I would a so called 'professional architect' fresh out of university (and even a number of people who profess that they are experienced architects). Experience counts and that's something Brunel knew very well. Brunel had an awful lot of hands on experience, in fact he's a rather poor example of education trumps experience as he took the vocational route not the academic route, civil engineering first and then design later.
Brent often comes across in certain way that does him no favors but think about it for a moment, he's not entirely wrong. Taking Brent's analogy of the aircraft pilot... while I wouldn't necessarily expect the aeroplane designer to be a top class pilot, I expect them to know what flying is like, what pilots seek out when choosing planes, any idiot can design a plane but it takes hands-on experience to design it well and when you're designing things without experience... you end up with transatlantic plane with no toilets and not enough extra fuel capacity to deal with any diversions mid flight (i.e. turbulence). Don't get me wrong I don't think education is worthless, but practical experience should be enhanced by education not replaced by it. Does Brent need an education? Probably. Are his boats terrible? (Probably not) Could they be better? Most likely.
Aside from the rust (because all steel boats are rust buckets, it's a given), i don't recall (last time I was here) that Brent's boats were actually bad as such compared to other steel boats is that the case?
In the case of the Maidenhead Railway Brunel used calculations. The reason so many travelled for days to see it fall into the River Thames was that Brunels peers and other Civil Engineers poo-pooed it and said it would not work.
They were proved wrong.
Brents steel boats are quite nice. We have all agreed that for a long term liveaboard visiting out of the way places where strength and self reliance are required they are ideal. If you look at BS designs for sale they look OK. They dont fetch high prices, few steel boats do. If you look on specific origami boat websites some are a credit to the builders/owners, some are sheds. And it was ever thus with boats!
Conversly, Brent dismisses any other boat building material out of hand and is scornfull and rude about them.
All boats are good.
Some are better than others.
The ones who should judge this are the owners, not a frustrated evangalist for steel boats.