: If this was an enticing way to build a boat it would be in common practice,
: wouldn't it? The idea seems so simple.
: There is a book "Building Your Kevlar Canoe", which is really about
: building fiberglass canoes on a male plug (which is what you are
: considering)with a bit of Kevlar, that goes thru' the entire process. For
: one thing they go thru' the process of building a mold which is five times
: harder to do than laminating the canoe hull. If they could have used
: plastic wrap they would have but they covered the mold with a couple of
: pounds of melted parafin and car wax over that. They must have had a
: reason.
: When they laminated the hull they did it in one shot. Three experienced
: people working as long as it takes to apply about 4 layers of glass. One
: mixes the epoxy the other two pouring and squeegying the glass. You can
: imagine what it's like to do this for 10-15 hours. Or more if it is
: required. This technique is used to insure there is a rock-solid bond
: between all the laminates.
: The downside to all this is every step has to be about perfect. If the hull
: comes out bumpy, lumpy or wrinkled you cant' take a grinder to it. The
: glass is the strength of the hull. If you cut into it to make it pretty
: you are causing irrepairable damage.
: If you go way back into the archives here you'll find there was a spate of
: posts about wrapping glass around a styrofoam plug like the surfboarders
: do and then digging the styrofoam. I'm sure some built boats this way but
: it didn't seem to catch on.
: Your idea is not new and I'm certain it has been done innumerable times. The
: hook is, can you produce a boat you would be proud to own or would it be a
: cobbled up mess. The difference is in the skill with which it is done. If
: the hull doesn't come off the mold nearly perfect there is little you can
: do to make it look right. Grinding and filling on a glass hull aren't
: condusive to a good result.

At one time, perhaps in the 60's or maybe into the 70's, this process was done with the idea of using an existing sucessful boat to make a copy and get people into the boat building business on the cheap. Often they would change the deck design to hide what they'd done with the hull. It became pretty obvious that it was done when the boats were sitting side by side though. There were also several lawsuits because of this. It takes a fair amount of time and money to hire a naval architect to design a custom boat and to build the molds that then may need several revisions to get a design perfected. You I'm sure can understand why this process would be looked down upon by honest builders. This is the reason for my distaste of the process in general.

Obviously it's a different thing alltogether making a copy of a friend's boat specially with his permission

Bill H.