Fiberglass Layup for a 17' boat

[henryblowery]

Hey, I was cutting down a 17' boat today and the thickness of the hull kinda suprised me....it was alot thinner than I expected. I was wondering how many layers of fiberglass you could expect in a 17' CC boat. Gel coat, then 1oz mat, then???? I'm just being a nosy kid right now, but I think it would be fun to build a fiberglass boat someday. Thanks in advance!

Gray

[tinhorn]

Building things out of fiberglass IS a lot of fun!

I don't build fiberglass boats (yet), but last summer I cut up a jet ski hull so it would fit in a dumpster. It was about 1/2" thick, and appeared to be all chopped strand. A few years ago I patched a neighbor's fancy motorboat (maybe 16' long) and it appeared to be closer to 1/4", with a layer of woven roving - heavy cloth - in the middle. Probably varies a lot by the manufacturer.

What were you doing cutting up a boat?

[henryblowery]

haha, me and my freind bought it, because the last owner is a plant manager at a fiberglass factory. We paid $100 for it, but he threw in a roll of roving, roll of roving/matt stitched togeather, and a roll of kevlar, + a bunch of other things...so thats why we bought it. Right now we have it parked next to another boat I'm restoring, and it makes an exelent dumpster. I took a sawsall(sp?) to it, to try and figure out how many layers they used, but I couldn't tell.

I was thinking in terms of hand layed construction...when I get around to building a fiberglass boat, I don't plan on messing with a chopper gun.

Gray

[waikikin]

Henryb, you got a righteous deal, well done. If you cut out a measured area & burn out the gel & resin then weight the remains you can work out the layup, but about 5-6oz per 1/8" of layup is a kinda rule of thumb for well consolidated chopstrand mat but a very resin rich layup will differ. All the best from Jeff.