boat stuck in mould

this is the only picture i have of the mould, its 10ft long and 4ft wide



its after a coat of gel coat here in this picture

 

Whacker,

Do you have any idea of how large the area is that is stuck?

How much water have you been able to pour into it? 5 - 6 gallons?

Allan

 

seems to be where the stem meets the keel, and maybe a foot square of that.
as for the water proberly more the five or six gallons, i can see the water between the mould and the boat coming up to the top but the bottom of the boat swells up with the pressure and i have to turn the water off, so it gives a good idea how stuck it really is

 

Whacker

Have you tried to lightly tap on the actual boat immediately outside the hung area? Very lightly w/ a rubber hammer


Allan

 

WELL its stuck and stuck bad so have to tear it out !! you will damage the mould and you will damage the boat so live with it !!
Right in the back of the hull in the keel glass in a wooden block and make sure its well glassed in drill a 50 mm dia hole in the block so can get a rope through it ! need a 50 x 150 piece of wood across the hull on edge and blocks onto the moulds top edge then wedge and lever the beam to get lots a pressure on the hull and literally rip it out slowly
Just have to Accept the fact that one or both will be damaged and get on with getting it out by any method but NOT HITTING !!! !! Hitting does to much dammage !!Use levers and the glassed in block to wrench the hull out do it at the back where the front with get the most possible twisting pressure to scew its self out .
While all this is going on you will learn very quickly a lot of very valuable lessons .First one is how much pressure simple glass chopped strand matt will take before it finally give way!! you will learn the importance of wax and waxing !! . If you have already taken a boat out with no problems one question that popped in my head was
THE GEL COAT WAS BRUSHED ?? YES ?? OR NO ??
WHERE DID YOU START ?? AT THE FRONT ?? ON THE SIDE THAT STUCK ??
WAS THE BRUSH NEW ? OR WAS IT A BRUSH THAT HAD BEEN USED BEFORE ??
IF IT WAS USED BEFORE WAS IT IN A CONTAINER OF ACETONE ??

WHEN THE HULL FINALLY COMES OUT please take some close up pictures of the damaged area on the hull and on the mould and post them .Its these lessons that are very valuable and hard to find as people dont like to have failures and admite that they did something wrong . If acetone was the cause there could be like brush marks show up in one or the other surfaces !!so the could be tell tail signs for you to see!!
Keep at it and just bite the bullet and get it out !! NO HITTING !!!!! WRENCH AND LEVER IT OUT does less damage to the rest of the mould !!!

 

If you can see where it's stuck, use a circular saw and cut around that area, if the mold is going to be used again cut the hull, if not then cut the mold.

By prying and ripping you will do a great deal of damage to both the mold and the hull, there will be stress cracks all over the place. It is easier to cut out a section and re-glass it than to chase stress cracks around for the life of both of them.

 

Why dont you split the mold down the centerline?

 

Has this mould been used before? Or is it new?

 

everything i used was bran new and never used second hand gear. i roller brushed the gel coat on. the mould has been used before but not by me. it looks to me like an old mould,
dougfrolich if i were to split the mould down the centerline how do i conceal this when building another boat would the line not transfer from the mould to the boat

 

With a split mold there's a flange with indexing nubs and/or alignment bolts, usually a quick dressing with wet & dry paper & a polish is all thats needed, sometimes a gelcoat touch up too.. depends on the quality or the matching of joining flange faces. Jeff.

 

should i split the mould do ye think?

 

At this stage after all previous attempts have failed, I would split the mould. Don't cut your boat!

 

i think so, what ill do is glass in two nuts at either side of the cut and be able to bolt it together to make it one again, how often will i space out the nuts? 4, 6, 8, inches apart, to make sure the mould matches up again

 

Splitting the mould may not save the boat. You will still have a stuck stem and two halves of a mould that will need to be majorly fixed to re-use again, and you run the risk of damaging more boat hull as you attempt to cut the mould in half.

Ondovar's suggestion is the least work. Cut the mould apart around the stuck part, and pull the boat out, probably with bits of the mould stuck to it. You can get your boat hull out and carefully grind the stuck mould bits off. With care, the hull can be polished up fine with no damage.

Then, you can tidy up the mould's cuts. You could even put the hull back in the mould after its been polished, and reglass the mould up against the hull - saving a lot of mucking about refinishing and re-shaping the mould by hand.

 

Spacing would depend on the weight and stresses involved. It would be better to over-engineer it than to take a chance on failure at a critical moment.