How to build a sailboat in foam sandwich. This document intended to be a help guide for those interested in starting the venture of building a small boat with laminated sandwich panel in fibreglass and resin.
I grew up building fiberglass sailboats with my dad. For someone who had never done this type of thing before, I was amazed at your craftsmanship. Excellent job. You are an inspiration to others. Thanks!
Thanks for the site. Couple suggestions for new fiberglass boat builders based on experience.: 1) Use a good isothalic prepromoted polyester resin instead of epoxy. Just as strong as epoxy and about 10 times cheaper in bulk. With fiberglass, the strenght is all in the glass. The resin makes it stick together and get hard. I know of no commercial boats made with epoxy. Good glass is clear and usually green. Brown means too much hardener. 2) Make fillets in corners with peanut butter (calcium carbonate powder and resin mix) using a ball of the "right" size". Fillets make corners many times stronger. Fair the outer radius with a template if you want. Corners are "stress risers". Fiberglass gets a LOT of it's strenght from flexing and load spreading. 3) Make fiberglass panels using a large sheet of polyethylene (HDPE) on a 2 x 4 frame.. It's the same material milk jugs are made from. Cured resin does not stick, no waxing or release agent needed, First coat can be the gelcoat, then a layer of mat. Panels are easy to work with (just spile them in), less waste, and need little finish work as the surface is completed and mirrors the panel surface. Use hot glue to attach panel sections to form ribs and ribands which are outside the hull. Add glass to the inside to desired thickness. 4) A high density (5 or 6#/cubic foot) polyethylene closed cell foam makes an excellent core for bulkheads, stringers and deck. Not much strenght in the foam, but has compression strenght which supports the glass placed over it. Resin WILL stick to rough closed cell hdpe foam. If foam is used for stringers, bulkheads, and deck...much weight can be eliminated without reducing strenght. Use peanut butter to bed the stringers and bulkheads.
I see a lot of marine guys swear by expensive foams for foam core, but it seems like if you're not counting on the foam for any strength once the boat is completed, then cheap polystyrene should also work? It just seems like decent glass is so easy to overbuild strengthwise, I can't imagine why you would care about using the foam for anything but making easy structures with glass...
Please, can you share specific product codes? Because I don't know about products quality. I also want to know do you want to add some new products or remove after two years. Thx for your help.
Beautiful boat and thank you so much for step by step descriptions of the process. I have a 13 feet Racelite sailer (made in Vancouver, Canada) , with a 36"x16" - 3/8" steel plate swing keel, having a lot of fun.
the stern open to the sea and yet no water gets inside to sink her....that is profound!...the inner tickings of the art of boatbuilding.....thanks for sharing.
Laughed so hard I thought I would die at the end, you fufilled the old jokeabout building a boat and did not realise you would have to tear the house down to get it out!
While I appreciate the time and effort that went into this project, I'm stunned at the waste of time and money. There's a plan for building a Minicup 12-foot sailboat on the internet made of 1/4 inch non-marine plywood which can be but not have to be fiberglassed for additional strength and durability. I built one in my garage in two weeks and did not fiberglass it. I water-tested it among a fleet of Sunfish sailboats and it was much faster and drier. It's an incredible boat and you don't have to tear walls out to get the boat out of the house. It's flat enough to go through a standard door. I suggest before tackling a project like this that you try to find plans for the Minicup on the web. Last time I looked, they were free. It's a a great little sailboat that you can have sailing in two weeks or less.
The stringer information I found very useful, thanks for posting. As always with everything, it probably cost as much to build as to buy one. But it sure was fun.
Thank you very much and great Job. I'm not building a boat but something like a camper shell on the back of my C4500 Kodiac that has a flat bed that we carry wind turbines on and want to protect them. It's going to open up on top so the turbine can cantilever up and out for show
Here in the states foam sheeting can be found at low cost at Home Depot. Just be sure that it is closed cell foam otherwise it may degrade in a marine environment. Also, make sure that epoxy will not melt it. Some foams will literally melt like ice cream when laminated with epoxy. Easiest is to do a spot check using a scrap piece.
Awesome video! Very good photos. I appreciate that you took the time to make this. Very helpful for a guy in the first phase of planning to build a boat. Thank you!
Nice job. For your next resin work and for other builders: You should use nitrile gloves, the chemicals will go through latex. I sometimes use thick (longsleved) Nitrile gloves and one way Latex over them. Working indoors you should also use some respirator. Thats a lot of dust.
Thank you for posting this video. You created a beautiful boat that I'm sure will creat many fond memories. I have a few questions: •. What is your estimate of the final weight of the boat? •. All in, would you share what you spent on materials? •. Approximately how many labor hours did it take to complete the project? •. Did you have any trouble sourcing the sail? •. Now that you have been sailing this design, are there any modifications you have done or would recommend? Again, thank you for posting this video. It really has me thinking about doing a similar project.
You should be proud of yourself, I see that you used a computer software to draw your boat and it's all right. I learned on the drawing table , I couldn't do anything until I told myself ''it' already there' ,then I drew my baseline from wtich all the other lines came from and it came to live; from the imagination. We are like god, we can create!
+Richard Beauchamp The open transom style is mostly used inshore choppy water on some faster boats. It helps get rid of foam faster. Its a specialized thing. Most boats have a transom.
un trabajo exquisito y muy buen vídeo! pero porque pones peel ply si no aplicas nada encima de este?para dejar la capa peinada o eliminar exceso de resina?
How much did the boat weigh ? What was it's length , width, draft ? Did you feel you should have made the deck deeper because of it's self bailing nature ?
Gracias por el video...excelente trabajo. he estado pensando en hacerme un "row boat" de este material, pero no se que tipo de foam es, ni donde se puede adquirir , vivo en España.
the boat design is quite normal for a competition boat. It is thin for minimum weight, but rigid enough since it will just carry one or two persons. The "open back" is quite common too for this kind of small sailboat. Looks like a neat job to me! Although I personally would go for different design and a wood build. Much easier and cheaper.
