Thread: Lost My Mind!

looks good

You should be very proud of all the work you have done, looks great.

Wow! I wish I had that kind of skill!

Just realized I had already posted the fix on the front deck but pics were a little different this time. Some of the fixes, I was able to take a lot of pics. Some I wasn't. Mostly the resin work because You have to roll quick with that stuff cause it will harden in like 10 minutes so as soon as You mix the catalyst in good, You got to go right now. I usually got it all over my gloves or hands too and could not hold my phone to take pics until I got cleaned up. Would have liked more pics of doing the actual work but most of the time, If I had help, they would be mixing resin while I rolled or helping cut out larger sheets of glass and placing in wet resin that i already rolled out. Glass is fun to work with once You have a basic handle on it and know when something is not going right. It is all about the prep work and thinking things through from getting all the prep work ironed out right to rolling on new glass. You don't have much time to mess with the stuff and if You make a misstep and have to stop, You will lose a whole bunch of resin and have to wait for it to kick off good before You start back to finish. That can be time consuming and costly with resin going about $20 to $30 a gallon from a boat builder. Buying retail gonna set You back $60 to $80 a gallon for the same stuff. I dumped roughly 15 gallons of resin into this project. The glass was about $1 a foot for 1 1/2 ounce cloth. thats the cheap part. no telling how much I spent on brushes and rollers and about 10 gallons of acetone at $20 bucks a gallon. Roll on bedliner(durabak) was 150 a gallon. Took about a gallon and a half to do two coats which is recommended by them and I agree. One coat doesn't give You enough non skid. 2 coats is just right and if you want to smooth the non skid down a little, a 3rd coat of smooth would do the job. Quit using latex gloves cause I got tired of fighting them and seemed like I would always run out of them at a bad time. Acetone would take the resin off Your hands but would dry them out terrible. It removes oil from everything including Your skin. If You have a small paper cut, it will show You where it is too! lol! The main thing I learned from doing this stuff is Prep work. I grinded for 5 weeks at 4 or 5 hours a day on the hull. Wire wheeled everything to rough it up, grinded all sharp edges to roll cause glass won't stick on a sharp edge. it has to be round and can be a pain then to keep down and keep air bubbles out. Not saying I could go make a boat out of a mold now but I can tackle a repair no problem except for gel coat. Luckily I didn't have any serious gelcoat damage and that stuff is another animal all on its own. I want to learn how to do gelcoat but not now. Got to refurbish the gel on this boat and going to have to compound and wax the boat to remove heavy oxidation to bring it back to near showroom. Also got to rewire trailer and paint it too. Thats the only bad part about this boat is the steel trailer. Old boat has a galvanized trailer. I do like the torsion axle this trailer has much better though. I don't feel many bumps pulling this boat as I did the old one. Heavy boat on 3/4 ton truck makes for a really smooth ride. Still got plenty to do but can do some fishing now and that comes first uh.... as soon as my depth finder comes in that I bought second hand. No finder on the front means I fish blind. I ain't doing that.CF

Originally Posted by REDBOAT

Wow! I wish I had that kind of skill!

I didn't Redboat. I am not a carpenter. I just bust sod for a living but I was lucky to have some really good guidance and access to a whole lot of tools. If You had to buy tools and start from scratch on everything, Just go buy another good boat. It ain't worth all that. Also Your time. It consumes so much time. I never plan on doing another job this big again. You would be faster to build one out of a mold than tear one down and build it back. But I was looking at the $$$ standpoint. Got my daughter in ECU right now and I could not make another bill. had to figure this out cheaply. another bigger boat for about $3000 dollars and to have everything in it new and improved gives me satisfaction. Same boat brand new today would run close to 50 grand. I also got to customize it where I could. No other boat like it. Thats for sure.CF

And that's why I'm proud of ya. I built a deck in our yard. And could not even get it square! At least while I was building it, I got to forget my troubles (was unemployed at the time) and just focused on that!

Made a cheap horizontal rod transport. I looked at the racks that are made and just could not figure out what I wanted to do and being that I go under a lot of low bridges, I thought it might be better to just keep the rods on the deck. so I had to figure out a bracket to mount on the side of the console to keep the rods from falling off the side of the boat. Was going to make one out of aluminum but then noticed an old depth finder bracket laying on the floor in the shop. Only took 5 minutes to figure out what to do with it. cut some of the ears off, drilled some holes for bungee cords, painted it with plasti dip and cut the bungees to size. drilled holes and mounted. 30 minutes later I had figured out what I had been thinking about since I bought this boat. It ain't the most professional looking thing in the world but it is practical. I wrap the lines around the rods to keep the rods from tangling, two sets of bungees hold the rods down and then a strip of velcro goes on the tips to keep them from whipping and tangling. Also my passenger will have plenty of room and the rods are not hanging off the boat in a rack or in a high rack that looks like a light pole.



Got an extra bungee on top for backup "just in case" whole rig cost 5 bucks.



Sorry about the fuzzy pics. Think I had some sheet rock dust on the lens from the work at the house going on.CF

Put a plaque on it saying "Made in the U.S. by a farmer". You have all rights to be proud of it.