After hunting through many fishing forum and searching the internet there appeared to be lots of post about bait boat builds There are many ideas of what size , shape , Manafacturing process to use. So we cracked on with our plans documenting in with a gopro in step by step photos.
We started of with standard house hold floor/ wall insulation there are many makes celotex. Kingspan. Etc we chose floor mate as I doesn't come wrapped in a metallic outer sheet. It comes in all sizes we chose 70mm as it's probably your most standard.
It's not cheap but we work in the construction trades and came across some off cuts on site. If your passing a new build housing estate it's worth stopping and asking the site agent if he has any off cuts as the final mould will be filled and sanded so it's possible to join bits together. Although it goes without saying the less joins the less filling needed
Mark out your desired dimension on the sheet then go round that size adding another 5 mm to 10mm
(see my second blog part 2 for plans of our dimensions )
this allows for deviations when cutting out and a small margin to sand back smooth. Once the form was finished we taped the entire mould with gaffer tape (masking tape or similar would also surfice ) this is to protect the foam from the fiberglass otherwise it would melt and become disformed.
Starting to Fiberglass....
Before fiberglass we put some 6mm ply on top the foam and screwed it down
( instead of ply you could use mdf hard board or chipboard this allows us to form a lip on the hull for fixings later)
We then added some 2x1 timber on top around the hopper openings make sure you wax the insides of the timber so the fiberglass releases
After we did this we used some off cuts of any thin timber sheets to make shuttering for the inside of the hoppers they should be a nice tight fit .
Make sure this is waxed and the waxed side goes against the fiberglass. We Also cut some small ruff blocks of foam to put inside the hopper opening to keep the timber pushed up flush whilst the glass sets
The glass itself
Cut sheets of fiberglass Matt to fit in designated locations ie we cut 8 sheets the width of our hoppers and the depth of the hull then 8 strips at the depth of the hopper but around 40mm wide this allowed us to lay the large sheet inside the hoppers then lay the thiner strips up the corners to form a nice square corner. How we thought of it was as embroidery with liquid e.g in embroidery you cut your meterial to the pattern then stitch it together. We applied that idea to fiberglass and lay all the sheets out cutting out or shapes then built up with thin joining strips to fill in the gaps and corners.
We started inside the hoppers as it was the hardest to reach
Mix the resin as it says on the tin then brush it on to the taped mould. In small workable areas then add a layer of fiberglass Matt and roller down with a ribbed roller then repeat the process across the entire mould adding as many layers as you want.
We did 2 layers of Matt then 1 layer of fine topcoat to finish it off. This gave us a 3-5mm thick hull. Once we finished we put the shuttering for the hoppers inside the hopper openings and packed it in place with the foam wedges to give us a square and smooth finish inside the hoppers
Hull after foam had been removed
That's it for part 1 part 2 will be up soon
If you want any help or advice or feel I have missed anything please feel free to comment
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