Glass Bottom Boat

Skorpa is primarily made of marine grade plywood. Fiberglass is used to reinforce areas of high stress and to protect areas from abrasion. The fiberglass I use is a woven cloth like material. Fiberglass can be made from synthetic materials, but what I use is related to the fiberglass that is used to insulate houses. Glass fibers are spun into thread and woven into cloth.

Here the hull is draped with 6 ounce cloth. I carefully laid the cloth out and worked to smooth out all the wrinkles. When I had the cloth fairly smooth I tacked it in place.

The epoxy is poured on and spread with a squeegee. As the epoxy soaks into the cloth the fibers become transparent.You have to put enough epoxy on to saturate the cloth but not so much you float the cloth off the hull or start runs of epoxy. You have to use enough pressure to move the epoxy but not so much you move the cloth. Is there any wonder I have trouble sleeping the night before?

The roller works best on vertical surfaces. I can get a thinner layer of epoxy. Building the epoxy up in several coats allows me to get the desired thickness without runs.

After I have the epoxy spread out evenly with the roller I go over the surface lightly with a foam brush to remove any air bubbles or roller marks. This leaves a pretty smooth surface so there should be less sanding to do.

Finding the centerboard trunk

Before I glued in the centerboard trunk I drilled a hole through the hull in the area covered by the inside of the trunk. This allowed me to know the location of the trunk now that the hull is inverted.

I made a jig to hold the router roughly perpendicular to the trunk and started the cut in the locating hole.

Similar to the way I cut out the seat tops. The router with a bearing tip did a good job of following the inside of the trunk.

After the slot was cut I could not resist temporarily installing the centerboard.

Here the board is retracted. The pin is installed. Seems like a nice fit. No extra wiggle room.

After I got the board back out of there I used the round over bit to (duh) round over the lip.

I used fairing compound to fill any small hole or imperfections at joints in the hull. Then a light sanding and the entire hull was sealed with unthickened epoxy.

I used a combination of squeegee and roller to spread the epoxy.

A foam brush is used to remove any bubbles or marks left by the roller.

Now the hull is ready for glass.

Move em out and roll em over

Sally and I rolled the boat out and a few neighbors came over to flip Skorpa back upside down so I can glass and paint the bottom. I cut the laminated stem flush and thought this made an interesting photo. You can see the inwales where they join the stem and the plywood hull panels meeting at the bow.

This is my second time flipping the boat so things were fairly relaxed.

Four of us were able to flip the boat with no problem.

When the four of us picked the inverted boat up to set it back on the frame we had the full weight which I think must be around 400 pounds.