As this text deals only with a certain type of steel construction, and you are reading it, it is probably not necessary to convince you of the material.

Also, there are many other materials that are different mixes of: nice, good performance, easy to build, cheap, solid etc.

For example I would love one day to have the money, the patience, the time and the love to detail required to build a big, beautiful cold-molded wooden hull in WEST Epoxy. I have seen some boats built like that, and they were just beautiful.

I know also that most of the boats - regardless of material - finish in roughly the same time, although some methods should theoretically be a lot faster than others.

I guess that the guys with the slower methods knew that in advance and just worked more ;-)

The real decision is probably made much more related to your preferences and attraction to certain material, by the way you like to work, by smells and loves and fears than by anything "objective".

If you are somebody who likes to carry a small piece of wood back and forth between the boat and your workbench, until it finally fits in perfectly, then building a wood or ply boat will give you the deepest satisfaction.

If you are somebody who likes to bang things into place, who likes to be dirty when working and who likes the strong, fast, no-nonsense approach to life then you will manage a steel construction in record time.

Just don't let anybody push you in any direction for absolute, "objective" reasons, if deep inside you are not happy with it.

BUILDING the boat will change you much more profoundly than actually HAVING it!

Give yourself time for reflection, find several others with different boats and go and help them on their boat for a couple of days.

See what it means to apply a wood construction with glue and sander to a boat rather than to an IKEA shelf. Go and weld a couple of lines somewhere in the heat of summer, in full gear and mask, on the deck of a steel-shell that is a hot as an oven. Does that make your pulse beat faster? You found your material then ;-)

Personally, what I know is, that I can over some years finance a steel boat, that I will have a safe feeling sailing it, that I will save a lot of money fitting it out with deck-hardware, that I can bang it on rocks and just make dents in it (done that), that I can leave it for quite some time without maintenance and risk rusty spots but not structural damage (done that to), and a hundred thousand other reasons.

Also I have come to love a seemingly cold and unforgiving material of which I knew absolutely nothing. Steel is more natural and more alive than you might think, and when you little by little find out about it's tricks and peculiarities you may become just as attached to it as I am today.

Also, and especially if you are somehow afraid of building in steel, it's an easy way to reconsider yourself and increase your self respect ;-)

Finally it's a good way to impress your social environment.

Your neighbors will come to love the sound of grinding and hammering and will appreciate the minerals that your blasting sand mixed with rust particles will carry into their rose-garden.

Just try to show a picture of yourself with oxy cutter and welding mask in front of the rusting 15m monster to your secretary and she will whisper " Is that really you? Oh, you are so crazy...".

You'd be surprised. We iron men get all the girls.