I can make molds but not a picture

[71kidcasper]

Billy the kid thanks for the help. I am guessing by the pictures that you posted that you live around Ocean city or maybe Sea Isle. I guess that's why I weld for a living instead of writing computer software for NASA. Well here is the story behind my 71' 20sf. I was given this boat in 1999. At the time I had no idea of how well liked these boats were. It just looked like a real sweet hull with great lines. When I first got the boat the engine was already gone and it had no center console. After some thinking I decided to cut out the deck and close in the transom. It was an I/O orginally.

After cutting out the deck and transom the boat sat for about six years. I towed it around to two different homes and my wife and I had the crewmembers you see above. At which point I got the itch to work on the boat and this is also the time I stumbled on this great website. After looking at alot of restorations on CSC I thought I knew what I wanted, so I began replacing the transom.

The center portion of the transom was mush from the outdrive and six years of being left open. I cut it back until i found good wood and still had enough space left for a solid glass job.

I laid in two layers of 3/4" marine ply with 3/4 ounce matt inbetween them and the interior transom glass and a mixture of epoxy and cabosil wherever there were any gaps.

After a bunch of layers of 1808 this is how it looked.

Here is any inside picture of the glueup. Notice the orginal rear seats. After everthing cured, I layed up all the laers of glass at once, I layed out the cut for a 25" motor and made the cut.

Here is the piece from the cutout. Notice the amount of glass on the left side, this is probably overkill but I only wanted to do this once.

At this point I started raising the stringers, which were all in good shape, and filling in the areas near the transom that were low because of the I/O. The idea to use dock foam is not mine I saw Strick do it in his jobs.

Here is another shot of the raised stingers.

This is when I realized what smart people mean when they say plan ahead. If I really planned this project out from the beginning I could have saved myself a lot of work. I could have cut out the rear seats from the start and replaced the transom from the inside. Which would have saved me a ton of work along with 7 gallons of epoxy and I don't want to say how much 1808.

Well now the boat is wide open I started building the deck. I wish I Billy the Kid had done his restoration a few years ago cause I would have done my deck like his.(NICE JOB) So I decided to build my deck in one piece and glass both sides before it went in the boat. Here are a few pics.


bottom side glassed

Once again not planning ahead enough when I raised my stringers I decided to raise the deck a little more to a total of three inches, so I added it to the bottom of the deck with mahogany.

At this point I took a stab at making molds for the new full height back seats.


After a little trimming this is how the first one came out.

Then another mold and the second seat.

You can see in the pics that they stuck a little and pulled of some MDF. These are the first molds that i have ever made. I coated them with epoxy and sanded smooth then waxed and buffed. The next molds that i made were just raw MDF that I wiped with a thick coat of Part-all and that worked much better for me.