Hold your horses! I wasn't suggesting that second hand K13s be sought, I'm not daft. Any new ones built now would have more modern glues used. I remember having to have the tailplane of my Oly 2b rebuilt from scratch, as the glue used twenty years before had started to let go. A very expensive CofA resulted.
The Olympias which I flew were all built from the kits which had been in store since 1937. The glue used was that used for military gliders built by Elliots and presumably long life was not expected for those machines. Its use certainly caught up with the 100 Olys built post WWII by Elliotts, and that was unfortunate. But nothing like this would happen if new wooden ships were to be built now. Adhesive technology has moved on. As for skill in building I doubt it is all that hard to find people who could do this work and train others. It isn't rocket science. Elliots had built wardrobes pre-war but built hundreds of gliders far more complex than a K13.
Even De Havilland got it wrong with the early Mosquitoes when they started to fall apart (in the air!!) in tropical climates. They soon fixed that though.
I maintain that a programme to build NEW K13s in quantity would be the most economical method of getting the ATC back into the air. Modern production methods and the economy of scale would both save money and TIME. and TIME is of the essence here I think. Glass ships are expensive and slow to make. Going that route spells extinction for flying in the ATC,and if they can't offer flying who will join? The ASK21 is fine in a gliding club where as soon as you go solo you move on to a single seater. In my time this was the Slingsby Tutor, a truly terrible aeroplane, but if you could fly it, you could fly anything they threw at you afterwards. I flew 22 different types of glider all told, and none were quite as awful as the Tutor.
If the intent is to give post solo cadets further flying they should be encouraged to join a club maybe supported by some kind of scholarship or subsidy to the club.
On a point of information: does anyone know how many ex ATC trainees actually joined the RAF, or is the ATC just a big youth club with a bit of flying (maybe) thrown in?
We need a bit of lateral thinking here. There was gliding before glass.