Fiber Glass a Home Made Center Console

[Fawn_Acres]

My bride of 50 years and I are currently building a pontoon vessel which we intend to use next fall to cruise the upper Mississippi River from Guttenburg Iowa to the Twin Cities to celebrate our 50 years together.

The vessel we are building consists two 25" x 24' pontoons,two 22" x 18' pontoons, and a 3/4" x 8' 6" x 24' treated plywood deck. We will secure our Sun Lite Eagle Slide In Pickup Camper onto the deck Our vessel will be powered by a classic 50 Mercury Outboard.

We are currently designing and building a custom center console to fit our needs.

Our current plans are to build the frame from native hardwoon, fill the openings with 3/16" mahogany underlayment, and then cover the entire console with fiberglass to protect from the elements and enhance its appearance.


We are planning on painting the aluminium railings on the vessel and thinking of doing the same with the console.

I have had very little experience with covering items with fiberglass and have seen some very poor quality attempts in the past.

I would therefore welcome any suggestions on the best fiberglass process to use and hopefully avoid a disaster.

Your advice and counsel will be deeply appreciated.

Sincerely
Fawn_Acres

[PAR]

If you're going to have natural finish to the wood, use 4 ounce cloth or less. Epoxy is the goo of choice to stick it down (and stay stuck to the wood). This will all need to be top coated with varnish, urethane or LPU to protect it from UV damage too.

A light weight 'glass will be invisible once soaked with resin. It will increase water proofness a fair bit, but it's mostly for abrasion protection.

Thee are many previous threads on this site covering how to handle these materials. You can also log onto any of the major epoxy formulator sites and down load their users guides.

[Fawn_Acres]

Thank you very much for the information PAR.

I will look at the epoxy sites for more details.

Fawn_Acres