foam kayak

Please post a link when you get your pics up on a site. spidennis@gmail.com

 

about 15 years ago I built a duck hunting boat that needed to float in 3" of water with my dog, all of my gear, 2 little girls and myself in the boat.

I did not have the resources that I have today. but I am a very good builder (I was raised in a construction family and started working at 8 years old), Way in high school I took night classes at the local college and got certified in CAD way still in the 10th grade, shortly after graduation of high school I got my general contractors lic. Now this was a long time ago being 44 years old now.

I say this because its ok to go out on a lime and just try what you think will work best for you, just do your research first, and place like this will will only help you with the great advice that comes here.

this is how I built my first boat

My first boat I built was nothing to be proud of today, knowing what I know now.
but it did work and it did the job I built it for, (if I had a place like this back then I would have done thing differently) but not by much.

the boat was framed out of 1"x 1/2" in cased the frame in thin fiber glass, (would not have don that today) then I door skins it, then fiber glassed it inside and out,.
after that I added sheets of Styrofoam and glassed those in as well (I used thin fiberglass up entail now, then I added some 1/2" rails on the bottom and used a heavy fiber glass.

painted it up and called it a day. that was 15 years ago,
I still use it today. I have never had to fix a ding in it and it still has not water leaks.

My new project is a lot like what you are looking to do.

what I am looking to build now is a kayak boat, that my son can use on his own for local fishing, I am going to do a ruff frame then use 2 part expandable marine foam. then carve it into what I want. then going to use a think fiberglass. I am not ready to start it but I will do a build thread here.

 

Thanks OutDoorPlay.

 

Sounds like this is to be a single layer layup, I would hesitate to use csm for the only reinforcement. Even thin 4 or6 oz woven would be far stronger.
I do agree on the resin, polyester is not near as forgiving in terms of flexibility.
The blank could be sawed in half, and much of the center foam cored out to remove some weight, them glued back together with a wood or carbon fiber stringer down the middle like a surfboard.

 

I built a kayak with a lot of foam in it once. It was very heavy. Its amazing how something made of bubbles is so expensive and so heavy.