Fiberglassing a wood hull?

There are many advantages to doing this, but first you need to make some preparations...

Begin by asking your wife for a divorce. If you do it now, maybe the court will have mercy on you. If you're a single guy, take a picture of yourself. You'll need this to prove how youthful and virile you were before you lost your mind.

Next, lock yourself in a room with open containers of MEK and polyester resin. Be sure to do this daily for several weeks. If you're not dead after that, you've got the right stuff. But first, mix the ingredients above and allow them to cure. Then, use a high-speed grinder to turn the clump into dust. Next, turn yourself into a human Dirt Devil and remove the debris by stuffing a straw up your nose. If you find this experience euphoric, you're a true cold-mold craftsman!

Once your journey into the bowels of respiratory disease begins, be sure to drive by the local Bayliner dealer each day for a healthy dose of what your project may never become. In the evenings, you can relax, have a beer and proceed to scratch yourself in places you didn’t know you had. And while you try to explain the red rashes on your body to strangers, you can take pride in the fact that that you’ve got about a 6 inch section of the hull perfectly faired and ready for paint… after you finish another 2000 hours of sanding, priming, coughing and cursing.

Just about the time you down that last Bud and are about to nod-off… your ex-wife will call to say “hello” and proceed to tell you about the rich man she just married. Turns out he made his money selling respiratory equipment.

'Nuff said?

Carl,
Is that your opinion or the managements? Oh yeah, you are the managment.
Next time, don't sugar coat it. Tell us how you really feel.
Capt Tom

this process can give the hull a second life if the rest of the boat is worth the work we have done this many times and have been sucessful with the customer satisfaction at the end of the project

Vicem yachts does this on cold molded wooden hulls covered with epoxy. They have described the process in details at their site.

http://www.vicemyacht.com/construction.php

I have a 51 footer from Vicem and have been using it since 2001. I have not even had the need to paint it and hull is still extremely intact. I know that alongside Vicem quite a number of builders use the same technic.

Nilo

Planking Type

I have had the pleasure (and misfortune ) of being around wooden boats for most of my life. Let me be clear about what you will be doing when fiberglassing a wooden boat - prolonging the inevitable. This is especially true if it is caravel planked (double planked) because you will have made it virtually impossible to monitor and replace the exterior planking. The difference between what you are proposing and building a cold-molded boat are vast. Since the wood has already been exposed to the elements and paint, there will lots of "stuff" in the wood grain that you won't be able to remove with even the most aggressive efforts. When you cover that all up with fiberglass, you are essentially creating a nice little petri dish for rot. The net effect is that you will have a nice looking boat with an easy to maintain finish -all in a package with a definite life-span.
Just last week I gifted my wooden boat to a local marine school because I don't have time to maintain it properly. My view is that there are only so many classic wood boats in the world, and it would have been selfish and irresponsible of me to allow mine to deteriorate into a large flower planter in back yard.
Somebody once told me that you never truly own a wooden boat- you are only it's custodian for a short while until the next suitable person comes along.
In summation- if you want a fiberglass boat, buy one.

Alas, I digress... my look at the itchy side of cold molding should be balanced with some info. Here's a thread on the subject...

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/technical-discussion/3504-cold-molded-boats.html

Sorry for my slapstick story above. It was late. I was tired. And it brought back memories I'd rather erase.

Carl,
I'm not knocking cold molded, but there is a true difference. I would hope that in a boat being built with this technique, they arent' using wood that has been floating around in the ocean for decades being exposed to bottom paint, oils, toxins, gallons of spilled cocktails, and who knows what else. It's just a bad idea! I know a thing or two about it from experience. Her is a link to a story about one boat which was built as a wood boat in 1962 and then fiberglassed over several years later because that was how they were building the newer boats. Several more years later somebody decided it would be another good idea to epoxy the interior of the hull. Net result- a dry-rot sandwich!
http://******************.com/features/0804huckins/

Ken,

I was just about to comment on your excellent post above. You're right... BIG difference between cold molding from scratch and trying to incarcerate a living, breathing organism.

Now that's just plain cruel and twisted!

Sometimes I see real nice wooden boats for sale at a bargain price. The reason use to be that the hull (from waterline down) is covered in fibreglass.

Trying to save old boats this way is not a waterproof investment, it rather cuts the original value in half...

Always entertaining...

...as well as informative.
Anyone who's ever messed around with a fiberglass project is nodding their head sagely at Carl's advice once they've picked themselves off the ground from their laughter fit.
To paraphrase that guy in "Apocolypse Now", man, I love the smell of styrene in the morning!

On the informative side, though, which all of us strive to pass on to others, lucid 484 need look no further than an existing company which used to build wooden yachts back in the sixties. These ingenious folks actually took back boats they had sold and subsequently 'glassed the exteriors and were successful, i.e., termites & woodborers were not forced to hold hands to maintain the hull's integrity after many years.

While Pem Huckins is gone, the delightful Cindy Purcell who now runs Huckins Yacht in Jacksonville, FL may well have some old geezers around who recall the process unless, of course, as Carl mentioned, that methyethylketone hardener fried that hemisphere in their craniums.

Huckins

I wouldn't shy anyone away from a Huckins because they are a fantastic and practical boat. I would, however, caution anyone who is buying a Huckins which was subsequently fiberglassed. My experience taught me that fiberglassing those old Huckins is a dangerous proposition. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, a former boss bought a very well kept 56' and had it surveyed by a Huckins guru from Jacksonville. The history of the boat was well preserved and it was actually owned by Pembroke Huckins himself in the 70's. All that being said, we learned the hard way that it was rotten to the core! We made the decision to repair it and embarked on a 7 month process of rebuilding the hull at Huckins. They did a great job and we were very happy with the results, but the problem wouldn't have occured if she hadn't been glassed over in the first place.
BTW- You forgot to mention Cindy's husband Buddy. One of the finest men I've had the pleasure of working with.

Hi,

I think you's have all scared the original poster away!!

I was once doing a job in Townsville(1992) where there was a guy who was applying thin strips of wood to the outside of a wooden motor boat about 10/11m long that he had stripped back with a gelcoat peeler then putting a tissue type glass cloth over the outside. He the filled , faired and painted it like normal.

That boat looked very sharp when it was done.

I wonder what it looks like now 14 yrs later if this method reaally does spell the begining of the end for the boats it's done on.