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Homemade Fiberglass Playboat
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Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9401

A friend and I are planning on building a fiberglass playboat over the winter for fun and it will also be used as a senior project for my friend's highschool. So far we have finished drawing up the designs and are currently looking to find a big enough piece of foam to carve for the mold. As far as the moldmaking and carving I dont think there will be any problems, but it will be our first time with using the wet layup fiberglassing process. If anyone has any tips, comments, pictures, or material suggestions that they think would be helpful for someone doing their first wet layup, please post them. Your posts are greatly appreciated. thanx.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9406

Just some thoughts here:

Check out the surf board building community, lots of descriptions on how to layup a foam core etc. For instance this online book on building surfboards: www.surfersteve.com/introduction.htm

If you glue pieces of foam together you can use regular insulation stuff available from your local DIY store. That is a lot cheaper and easier to obtain than a big block of foam. Besides, if you make a mistake you simply take out a piece and replace it, thus preserving your other work.

You can glue foam with epoxy or some special glue (just ask, they will know what you need).

On www.boatertalk.com/forum/surfzone there's a guy called \"Kanuman\" who recently made an instructional video/DVD on how to layup a foam core boat. It is called \"wrap your *ss in fibreglass\". I still have to order it myself but this may be of help.

HTH and keep us posted on the results :D ,

Michiel

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9407

Thanx soo much for your input. The surfboard building site seems like it will b a great help. So far what i have done is this drawing of what i am planning to shape. What i am going for in this boat is a fast yet short wave boat that still has enough volume to throw some big air loops in holes. check it out...
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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9408

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9409

jpiano102 , there was something wrong with the image upload area. could you please try to upload that picture again?
If you're happy, you're successful.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9411

Oh, another site I completely forgot to mention: www.ptone.com/boatbuilding2002/

It's about making surfkayaks but they look sweet!

Edit: where are you located? If it's anywhere near Rotterdam (Holland) I could give you a couple of really big pieces of foam I have lying around. I still want to build a new playboat myself but I've got enough to build at least two boats.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9420

Im actually located in New York (USA), but thanx for the offer and thanx again for all the websites. they are great. ...heres another attempt at getting this pic up here...
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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9429

Cool! It looks like a real nice surf/freestyle toy.

:notworthy:

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9442

Hi all... I'm \"the friend\" who actually has to do this project for a grade. Needless to say, if I'm going to spend this much time on the kayak, I want it to be both functional and durable. We've got the design down pretty well- really short play/surf boat- but now we need to actually get it built. I've been doing some research on how people do seams and glasswork (thanks for the ptone site) and wondered if anyone had experience with this. On the ptone site, he actually splits the boat up into two pieces, the hull and the deck, then glasses them both together. I have also seen designs where the whole boat is glassed together around the foam, which is removed later by hand or acetone. If anyone has info on the durability/ ease of construction on either of these methods, let me know.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9450

Hi,

Preston Holmes (who, incidently also designed the Riot Boogie with Corran Addison) built the Gecko first (www.ptone.com/Kayak/surfboat/). He built this boat around a foam core.

I'd say mail him or Byron Olson (the other guy in the Boatbuilding2002 project) to discuss the problems they ran into. One big problem was removing the foam, at least that's what their website said.

You can also talk to Byron (and occaisionally Preston) on Boatertalk, the surfzone forum.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9456

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If you are using a polysyrene type foam as your blank do not use evostick as it will eat away at the foam!

HAve fun do it in a isolated room with lights by your hips if possible and have a vacuum handy its a really fun job but takes a while and makes alot of mess!

Keep us posted on how you get on 8)

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9462

city, adx, western? where in New York?

look up JR Sweet. I think that Davey Hearn has taken over the business, but both guys have designed and built plenty of boats. AND, it's a good source for materials.

I'd be happy to continue talking to you here or privately about my experience building some playboats and slalom boats.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 7 months ago #9463

I am located in Rochester.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9499

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The guys at shaggy designs have an interesting page on how to build a boat and they are really friendly and have answered some questions I asked

www.shaggydesigns.com/

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9513

Hi,

I am sure that if you ask Ed at Murky Water Kayaks he would offer some guideance. He is probably one of the worlds best composite kayak crafters. check out. www.murkywaterkayak.com

Good luck with your project, post pics of the finished article, don't worry if it takes a few goes, it took me 5 goes to build a resin boat with an existing mold! I wouldn't build around the foam incase you want it again. Unless this is a one off ofcourse.

Best of luck and have fun with it

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9515

Thanks everyone for your posts. I have recently sent a message to Corran Addison and an email to Shaggy Designs for a little more information. I think we are going to go with a method similar to the one Shaggy uses by making the foam mold then glassing a single layer of fabric over the foam to make a plug. Then we are going to use a filler over that which will be polished and possibly waxed. From the plug we will make the boat in 2 halves (deck & hull) then tape the 2 halves together. hopefully all goes well, but im sure there will be a few snags along the way. I have tweaked the design of the stern a little bit. Heres the latest design. I wont say final, cuz im sure it will change again. Thanx again to all who have posted. Everyone has been a huge help.
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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9516

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9538

thats really kewl!! Id like to know how you designed it? Like what did u use or do?

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9539

The design process was fairly informal. We took the design aspects that we liked from our playboats, plus a little BlissStick RAD, then added in the surf characteristics. It's basically a playboat deck profile with the rails and the stern rocker of a surf boat. I've done a little preliminary modeling on Autodesk Inventor and Carrara, but most of the design work has been free hand. Any suggestions?

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9549

The only thing that might make it better is a little more volume in the stern for more balanced carthweels, but it looks pretty sweet already, especially as a surf boat

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9560

thanx robmeister. thats a good point. i added a lil more stern volume. let me no what u think.
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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9563

Some designers like Byron Olsen tend towards a quadfin setup as this allows better control and manouvrability (I think, never paid enough attention to it as my surfkayak has a tri-fin setup).

If you're interested in more information see also www.boatertalk.com/forum/surfzone and search on \"quad fins\". You'll find lots of discussion on it :grin:

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9564

michielv wrote:

Some designers like Byron Olsen tend towards a quadfin setup as this allows better control and manouvrability (I think, never paid enough attention to it as my surfkayak has a tri-fin setup).

If you're interested in more information see also www.boatertalk.com/forum/surfzone and search on \"quad fins\". You'll find lots of discussion on it :grin:


or just search playak of course to search further back and search all worldwide forums :)

playak.com/paddle-news.php?cat=Forums&am...&search=quad+fin
If you're happy, you're successful.

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9568

Patience, patience and patience,,, builded snowpulks few years ago starting from plug.... lot of sanding and finishes... the more time put on the plug, the better the mold then the final producs..

I used Charles C.Walbridge's book for my pulks, but it's a boat building handbook
www.eagerplastics.com/bookboatbuilder.htm

Real complete book on how to built layup boat...

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9570

better, looks like that boat is going to be some good times. Whats the overall volume of it?

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9578

I wanna shoot for 50gal. on my boat. right now i paddle a dagger G-ride which is 54 and i feal like its a little too much volume for flatwater but i love the extra volume for aerial moves. so i wanna go for a little less volume for flatwater but i dont wanna go any lower then 45 on it. as far as getting the volume right at 50 i think it will be impossible and we'll just end up carving till we like it and figure out the volume later. im deffinately liking the quad fin idea too. im big on wakeboarding so a lot of the fin design i have already is influenced by the long shallow fins on a wakeboard. wakeboards have recently started adding quad fins as well and i like the ride. for the surf boat im probably going to do molded in quad fins that are long and shallow. the long shallow fins are nice because they offer a lot of carve on edge, but stay fairly loose when the board is neutral. im hoping this concept works as well on the boat as it does on boards. heres a pic of the liquid force fish which influenced the fin design...
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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9579

quad fin setup... does the placement look right?
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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #9585

He's a small kid, which is why he's only going for 50 gallons. I'm 6'4\" and 195 lb, so I'm going to head more towards 55 and maybe a little longer so that I can get my feet in. The design is the same, just scaled up a bit...

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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #10145

cswoodard has found some foam for our boats and with all this time spent on looking for foam we were able to improve our design even more. here is the latest...
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Re:Homemade Fiberglass Playboat 18 years 6 months ago #10146

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