Hydro,

Yes, there's many ways to build other than light. I over built my planes for years until I rebuilt a .25 size plane doing everything to save weight. The first plane was powered by a .40 engine. The 2nd plane was powered by a light and powerful .25 with some mods and like I said EVERYTHING possible was done to save weight - construction / equipment... everything. The 2nd plane was 9 oz lighter than the first one. The difference between the way the two planes flew was night and day. The light one flew 1000000 times better than the heavy one, even though the heavy one had more power, the weight to overcome made it fly like crud.

Your float length and step location are correct. I went to give you the link to the Chuck Cunningham float design standards, but the site was down. I'll keep checking. There's lots of float design threads here in the Float flying forum. You're on the right track.

For the reasons in my first paragraph above I would HIGHLY.... ABSOLUTELY recommend against built up floats for your plane. Your comment about White foam soaking up water is so mind boggling that we must be talking about something different. I've never ever saw closed cell white styrofoam soak up water...it's impossible. The material you saw soak up water must have been something else. I've used built up floats and home made styrofoam floats on floatplanes. I used styrofoam floats on a Kadet MKII for 3 years that worked excellent and were only covered with packaging tape. Yes they looked like crud, but were functional, super light, and never soaked up any water. Yes built up floats look nice, but are waaaayyyyy heavier. Look at the example above in this thread....3 pounds!?!?!?!! Thats over half of the plane weight! My styro floats for a .40 size bird are a half pound. That's with all the supports and everything. Even if you glass them (which I would recommend) you are still under a pound.

I like working with balsa and ply too, but for your application foam is the only way.

Jeff