My First Boat *pics and questions*

[fishingdan]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

I agree with Craze. <br /><br />- No rhino lining. Too heavy, too expensive and not necessary.<br />- Don't use treated plywood. Use at least 2 coats of epoxy to encapsulate the wood. Again, try to find void free stuff. <br />- Raka, MAS, System 3, West Systems (the most expensive of the group) and E-poxy from boatbuildercentral.com (an excellent and inexpensive private brand also designed for boats) are all excellent. My personal preference is System 3 or E-poxy.

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

Todesengel, I had a 68 Mark Twain that I just refinished. I can't say this enough, but ebay, ebay, ebay. I really set a tight budget for my boat. I bought my seats and pedestals from ebay. Just cheapy seats, but they were soft and looked nice. Based on those seats, I chose my color scheme for everything. Structure first, though. I bought epoxy on ebay fom orionspyramid, if you want to look him up. He sells some decent stuff, although the uses of it varies from batch to batch. I didn't like all of it, but the price was really good and I just had to thin some with acetone. Do yourself a favor, though, and break down each thing you're going to do. If it's stringer and transom replacement, learn every possible thing you can for a couple days before you even start. When it comes to epoxy, particularly, when that stuff dries it dries fast and hard. If you don't plan for every possible event-setup, laying out the cloth(pre-cut), cleaning afterwards, globs on places you don't want it, etc...you'll end up with a mess and be sorry. Steps like that take care, and have to be planned out very well in order to pull it off. Beyond that, you can get some nice little LED lights on ebay that draw almost no battery, upholstery for the sidewalls, carpet, glue, etc...If you have time and patience, buy from ebay and suppliers that you'll see mentioned here. It'll be a lot cheaper than your local marina. Good luck with the project, and if you want to see some pictures of what I did with mine, email me-it's in my profile under the link for a webpage.

 

[JasonJ]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

Just for another spin, you don't need to use epoxy to do this project. Epoxy is great stuff, works very well, but for a person on a budget, is not necessary. You can use polyester resin, it is less expensive, it works, and it is what the boat was made from in the first place. What you need to pay attention to is how you do your rebuild. The goal is no exposed wood at all. Most boat companies threw boats together, what was not seen was shortcutted. The end result was exposed wood stringers and floor. That coupled with the basic neglect boats recieve (Not being covered when not in used), results in rotted hulls.<br /><br />If you do it right, you will never have to worry about it again. Click my link if you want to see what a nasty tri-hull can be turned into. Good luck...

 

[erikgreen]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

Todesengel -

Just for the record, I personally recommend you reconsider your name... speaking for myself, it's offensive. I think most people would think twice before picking "Nazi Death Angel" as a screenname here, and that's the most common translation.

With regard to the comments here on epoxy, the price isn't that much more. The cheapest epoxy I have found costs me about $50 a gallon shipped. I can get poly resin (Bondo) at the local home depot for $35, but I'd think twice before using it. I expect the difference between the two shipped to be less than $15.

Epoxy is lighter, adheres better, is more forgiving for less skilled application, stinks less (although it's more toxic) and doesn't need to have wax added or be kept covered to cure completely.

Just FYI, I buy my epoxy from an ebay store called "polymer composites" and I'm pretty sure they just buy bulk epoxy in drums and repackage it.

Erik

 

[ezmobee]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

why would we drag out a 2 year old thread????

 

[erikgreen]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

Because we're not *finished* with it, dammit!

Actually, I was doing some searching on our now-working search engine and didn't realize that I was reading an old thread on a search page as opposed to one listed on the front page

sorry.

 

[bassboy1]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

Aww man, I read through all the daggum posts, and was about to offer my assistance and welcome a newbie when I read EZ's post. Then I realized it had all been for nothing...

 

[divertodd]

Re: My First Boat *pics and questions*

It may be an old thread but It was new to me (as I am new here) and I enjoyed reading it! I got a lot of good ideas and information....Thanks