Shopsmith Forums

I am planning on making a compartment that mounts under the leaning post seat in my boat to hold odds and ends. I was planning to use something like King Starboard which is a high density plastic sheet that is made specifically for the marine industry. I need a 24" x 54" sheet but it costs about $170 from a guy on EBay which is the cheapest place I have found it and shipping is free. Does anyone know any alternative plastic lumber materials I could use? I was planning on using a 1" thick piece but could probably get away with a 3/4" thick piece if need be. I just can't get over how much it costs for sheet plastic it blows away the cost of wood but i don't want to mess with epoxying and fiberglassing the boc I am planning to make. The plastic would be ideal.

You need the walls of a little under seat catch all box to be 3/4" to 1" thick? What are you storing in there that you will need such heavy wall thickness?

If you don't need load bearing capability, could you use PVC trim boards to construct the storage box? I picked up a couple of 1x4 pieces from Lowes to use for straight-edges to lay porcelean floor tile. It can be machined with standard woodworking tools.

Why don't you just make it out of wood? There are plenty of rot resistant woods that have been used on boats for centuries with great success without any epoxy or fiberglass.
Incidentally fiberglass shouldn't be on the list. It won't stick to the wood and will ultimately cause more trouble than it was meant to prevent.

Paul M

shipwright wrote:Why don't you just make it out of wood? There are plenty of rot resistant woods that have been used on boats for centuries with great success without any epoxy or fiberglass.
Incidentally fiberglass shouldn't be on the list. It won't stick to the wood and will ultimately cause more trouble than it was meant to prevent.

Paul M

Paul,
A wooden canoe or kayak has been on my list of projects I would like to build when I have a wood shop bigger than the laundry room. Nearly all the plans I have seen call for coating the hull with a thin layer of fiberglass. I've never been thrilled with this idea as fiberglass is such nasty stuff to work with and it seems even a thin layer would obscure the wood grain. I would think spar varnish too soft, perhaps epoxy? What is the best alternative?

Troy

Done with clear epoxy and you can't see the fiberglass. It is glass after all.

What you're getting tripped up on is the cheap polyester resin fiberglass repair kits. That's the cheap stinky murky jelly stuff. Don't use it.

The epoxy on the other hand is virtually odorless, expensive, clear and liquid. Great stuff.

Sticks wonderfully to wood.

My first kayak was a stitch and glue with a strip deck I designed. Modified a Mill Creek design.

You could coat the wood with epoxy and use varnish to UV it. Fiberglass will stick to wood. Wooden canoes are built using stips of wood and fiberglass. I just finished making a 14 foot boat using cedar strips. The bottom has two layers of fiberglass and the inside has one. I used the West System epoxy with the clear hardener. It was easy to do using a small paint brush. The West System does not have the strong fumes that some epoxy has.

To clarify: Technically fiberglass won't stick to anything. It is a dry fabric.

Fiberglass, is a term commonly used to mean glass fiber reinforced plastic (GRP in England). It is laid up with polyester resin, a useful plastic that sticks to other polyester beautifully, as in a fiberglass boat, but does not stick to wood as several quite well known boat manufacturers discovered to their dismay back in the 60's. When I said that fiberglass wouldn't stick to wood I was referring to that definition.

Fiberglass, as in glass fiber reinforcing material, can be applied with polyester as above or with other plastics, notably in boat building, epoxy.
Epoxy will stick to just about anything except polyethylene.

Troy, I agree with Foxtrapper, You should use a light glass cloth in epoxy. My suggestion would be 6 oz. glass cloth set in System Three Silvertip Laminating Resin. It is a water clear epoxy resin that has a great consistency for wetting out cloth and cures without the amine blush that most other epoxies have. That makes it much easier to sand.

Epoxy alone would lack the necessary abrasion resistance. Also the cloth / epoxy skin will add a surprising amount of stiffness.

Paul M

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