Making an Engine Bracket

[strick]

This next secuence of pic's shows the swim platform after the lay up is complete. The final tally was 2 layers of 1808 then the corecell then 2 more layers of 1808. Then one time around the edges and corners with 6 inch 1708 tape. It broke loose from the mold without any difficulty. It weighs I'm guessing about 20 pounds max. The textured surface was a little blotchy but I think I can still make it work for me. After freeing it from the mold I trimmed off the excess fiberglass and cut it to fit the flotation chamber. Lucky me it fit's perfect! I'm going to have a some fairing and sanding to do but it should look good when it's all finished. I'll post pic's when I get the whole thing complete. Here are a few pics along with a link with all the pics of the project. http://www.casdvm.com/photos/swimplatform2/

Strick

[Bigshrimpin]

Wow . . . That came out really nice. The platform fits on perfectly.

[Johnny]

That looks great. What a professional job. You should pull a fiberglass mold on the finished unit.

[strick]

Thanks Wild thang. Welcome to the board.

I've finished the bracket. It just needs to be mounted and painted. Things do not always go as planned like usual. My non skid surface from the FRP mold did not really come out that great so I decided to just fair over it all with epoxy/cabosil. If I were to use the stuff again I would put two heavy layers of epoxy over it before laying up the glass. There were several areas were the glass was not saturated anough and left it blotchy. Another big mistake was putting duratec as a first layer in the mold. It did not adhere that well to the glass and I had to grind it off and re-primer with the duratec after a bit of fairing and sanding. I talked with Ringleader about this and he thinks that if I had let the duratec dry and then sanded it then it may have adhered to the epoxy OK. I bonded the two parts together with cabosil/epoxy. I still dont kow how much it weighs but I can move it around easily by myself. I'll take it to a scale and weigh it later. I'm done making molds for accessories on this boat right now but in the future if I do any big mold projects I will try working with gel coat and vinylester resin. The following pictures are for your enjoyment.













Strick

[Dave Hirshberg]

Incredible work, Can't wait to see the finished boat.

[optiguy]

Strick'
Nice work. I wish I had found this board sooner. I could have saved you a pile of time bye passing along some tricks about making MDF molds. I have made more than I can count using MDF and Duratech.
Bill

[strick]

Dave- Thanks. It's gonna be a while before she is done. I need to start taking some time off work if I'm gonna get her done by fall.

Bill- Shoot me a e-mail as I'd love to get some pointers. As of yet all I've had a my own experience to go by so I would like to talk to someone who has been in the industry. casdvm@msn.com