[Bruceb]

dang with the great qualities of plywood I would not necessarily say going to aluminum is a step up. Wood is infinitely more workable by most anybody, has great properties including that it does not conduct electricity and can be glued, screwed and machined by methods that most teams have including hand tools.
I have been trying to get our team to explore it more.
Not that I have a bias. I hand built a 20 ft center console fishing boat from plywood 15 years ago and it still looks like new.