: My experience with polystyrene, epoxy, kevlar & glass used to make sail
: boards was that the PS foams did not have enough edge strength to hold up
: to the loads of wave sailing, in particular wave jumping. A layer of 6 oz.
: kevlar however, made them indestructable even when the whole bottom was
: flapping loose from the foam.

These are some thoughts about building a solid foam boat. After gluing up your foam chunk for the boat, using a magic marker, put on the center lines, top and bottom, a base measuring line on the sides. and all the cross section lines around your block of foam. Draw the top view and side view on the foam block. Now with a stiff .020 hot wire, (this can be purchased in a five foot length at www.micromark.com for $6.95) fasten it to a flat guide board at a right angle. Turn the block of foam on its side and cut the keel shape. Put the lines you just cut off back on with a marker. Now turn the foam top side up and this time cut the sides off from the bow to stern. Again put your lines back on. Always do this after cutting them away. Now, measure up from your side baseline to the deck heights and put this deck shape on with a marker, from bow to stern and cut the deck profile length. This will be a little harder since you are now working on a shaped surface. Now take your stiff .20 hot wire and bend it to the pattern shape of one of your section from the hull center line to the keel center line. Burn this shape into the foam. This will take some kind of guide. Do all sections shapes this way. Now rough cut all of the material away until you are close to section shapes. You can do this with a hot wire or with a fish filleting knife which really works well with out grabbing. Fair it all up and fiberglass or Kevlar. Then the interesting part comes in cutting and shaping the portion to fit you, seat braces, etc. I liked the idea mentioned of doing some of this ahead of time by cutting out the material and putting the foam back in place with tooth picks. Then when you start this process you just lift out these sections. This could not only be the cockpit area but your legs and feet area.

I am also glad to know that what fillers will work.

Would the designers allow us to do this with their building plans if we bought the plans for this?

John