boat stuck in mould

Hi Whacker,
Please read post #93.

Since you plan on making more boats once you've done your mold repair having some extra white gelcoat on hand isn't a bad idea. I would like to add one word of caution here...you haven't actually repaired your mold yet, and until you do I would hold off on spending a lot of money on supplies. I know everyone is giving you a lot of encouragement about how to accomplish these repairs, but there's a big difference between saying it and actually making it all the way through a project this big.

To be honest you've done quite a bit of damage to that mold, and it's NOT going to be easy putting it right again. Depending on your level of dedication, effort and workmanship you could be looking at a month or more of some pretty serious effort before this mold is useable again. I took on my first mold repair because I love a challenge, I wanted to see if it could be done, and if I was up to the task.

Knowing what I know now my first thought when looking at this mold would be "I can fix that"...my second thought would be "Hell, it would be faster and easier to make another mold". I don't want to discourage you from taking a route I chose myself, but I do want you to think seriously about your other options. IF there were a hull available I would probably opt for making another mold rather then fix this one...why you might ask? Because for the amount of time it's going to take to fix this mold I could flip a hull over make a mold and pull a part out of that mold.

From the pictures you've posted so far the original mold doesn't look that good to start with...the uneven colors, and the heavy brush strokes are indicitive of poor workmanship from the previous builder. The repairs you need to make aren't going to make this mold any prettier either, and could create more work for you in the long run.

You might consider a plan B. Fix this mold well enough to get a part out of...this will be your plug...clean up the plug, and pull a decent mold off of that. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but it allows you the opportunity improve the finish as you go, and working on a positive male plug is a LOT easier then working in that female mold. It's just a thought but one worth pondering.

MM

 

i know i would much prefer to make another mold from a hull be more realistic, but ive no hull to go off, the first boat i built has been sold on and the second one is chopped up to pieces.
if i can fix this one up and i pull another hull from it and all is fine i dunno is there much point on making a new mold just yes, material cost are expensive, if i were to do this it would seen like i was going backwards, ive hit a loss already. but if the summer is good to me and the boats sell in there plentys, ill def be making a new mold but not after im making some profit.
dont mean to sound arrogant here but is there really about a months work on repairing the mold,
wat i can understand of it all is flow coat into the holes until the flowcoat is over the molds surface sand down starting with 320grit and finishing at 1200grit, and rub compound starting at 200/300 and finishing at 500. and its ready. would that be a rough idea?

 

To repair you mould is just a couple of days thats all!! if you work with the two hands you have than its much quicker . one handed workers get paid accordingly 50% less in my book . filling takes a couple of hours then rough sand off the high places 2 or 3 hours later and check to see if there any more filling to be done and do it !!
so that takes you to lunch time of day one . the rest of day one can be wet and dry sanding the places that are good by the afternoon you should be into the rough sand of the second filled bits !!!day two a fine sand and up to a polishing stage by the afternoon .wednesda to tidy up and finish any bits not done porperly
By next thursday morning you should be at the stage of 4 coats of wax on the mould and gasses of over night and being ready to gel coat !! Use pva and spray as i said!!!! then gelcoat at 1.5% make sure the catalyst persentage is correct !! the temprature needs to be 18 c to 20 c for all the time you are waxing and doing your pva and gelcoating !!! .Just a wee note here . Gelcoat container needs to be up in a bench off the floor . takes a while (up to 12 hours )for a container of any sort to adjust to the temprature its surrounded by!!the floor is the coldest place !! On friday morning you should be laying the first skins of glass and in the afternoon laying all the rest of the glass and finished !!at his tage dont fit you tansom plywood yet the hull should be able to cure over night ,if you maintain the 20c temparture and saturday morning a quick twist of the mould should release the hull almost instantly as the glass and risin will have shrunk a little and the hull will have relesased all by its self !!. so tip it up side down and take the hull out of the mould do a quick check !! then pva spraythe mould again !! blow it dri and gel coat straight away like there and then !!!! by the afternoon the gell coat will be ready to lay the first glass and so on and so on . set you self a tight schedual and stick to it !! nothing happens unless you make it happen , so get on with it !! your gel coating is going to be your biggest problem and do it right and do it properly and wont have to think about second caoting
Something just popped into my head do you have a fan of any sort?? if the mould id laying down you need to gently blow air into the mould to getthe styrene out and make the gell go off quicker
Styrene is heavyer than air and if the mould is sitting it cant escape that could have been a part of you wax attack problem because the gel coat sat in a un-gelled state for a long time!!!, it could have attacked the wax and melted it !!!Will never know so no fan the sit the mould on its end against a wall or on its side to let the styrene fumes out . DID YOU ALREADY MAKE ONE BOAT THAT CAME OUT OK ?? If so think about the air flow after you gelcoated the mould the first time !!! it could be something that simple and silly and stupid that caused it to stick !!
Have a nice day !! i been awake and up since 3;00am !! couldnt sleep thinking about you boat problem !!

I saw some where about wax solution and flow coat .
Wax solution is simly candle wax melted and held in suspension in styrene !! it can be added to standard gel coat to make flowcoat , EASY ?? Flow coat usually has a little more pigment to make it cover better !! me i add a little resin to the gel coat makes it flow and smooth out better as well . use a small 4 inch wide paint roller to put it on with that way its quicker and so you can up the catalyst to 2% and job finished sooner !!

 

yep got one boat out with no problems, beginners luck or something i dunno but it worked, i was faster with the gel coat on the first turn, and had a blow heater too that looks like a jet engine, and i had it blowing into the mold to heat the cat up to cause the chemical reaction to cure. it was cold then proberly march early april.
i wrote up on how i built the boat on boards.ie its in the sailing and boating section, the thread is called the beginning of a new boat. id copy the link but i dont know how to do this.

whats the difference between the wet and dry sanding?

 

wet sanding the paper lasts longer and get 3 times the milage from it !! and dosent clog up so easy plus the dust is in the water and runs away !!

The thing of your jet heater could have been your life saver in boat one . You need it again and maybe evertime just as a precaution and safe guard !!
warmth is the way to produce things better and quicker NOTE WARMTH NOT HEAT !! !!Everthing is prodictable and you can set you time to do jobs and have them finished by at a given time ,almost to the minute !! summer or winter keep a constant 24 hours of the day 20c temprature everything in the work space is the same resins, gelcoats and catalyst !! you have it made !! THe cure of products that you made is much better and release simply by dropping on the floor they usually fall out of the mould !! Just pick up and pva and regelcoat in minutes and into the next one !! dont know if you notices=d or not but using pva there is no need to clean or touch the mould in any way just respray , blow dry gently and re-gelcoat !waxing is a pain and slows things down when time is a critical factor in producing lots a things in a short time !!.

 

Whacker,
I guess we'll just have to see how long it takes you to get that mold back into condition before we can answer that question. Since this is your first mold and your first venture into repairing one I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and stay hopeful that you can indeed get through this. Let me just say that there is a lot of work ahead of you, and unlike Tunnels I'm not so sure it'll be done in a couple of days.

There is a lot more to getting a mold surface defect free then you might imagine, and given that the wounds are in and around inside radiuses or on the tops of the strakes, you have your work cut out for you. I don't mean to sound arrogant but reading about it is a lot easier then doing it..

Don't forget to post pics as you progress.

MM

 

its 10 foot long !! for heavens sake if you were in a production situation 3 days would be gel coated and working again !! think what you can do not what you cant !!. get into it and get it done lock the door and swallow the key !! get it done come on . These 24 hours in a day that 3 days if you were relying on it as a living !! You need to work in a asian country for a life changing exsperiance where ith guys will work 7 day as normal and 3 days straight to get a job finished . 18 hours a day is childs play and i did that for over 9 months . you'd think it was fun if it was a all weekend party !!

 

this is the first boat i built

 

All the best with your endeavours, If your going to keep selling them you might want to install buoyancy compartments. Regards from Jeff.

 

thanks jeff, thats an option for themselves, if they would like buoyancy tanks i can make it up for them no problem

 

Awesome, an easy sell for you, any thing that enhances safety, some places there's regulation requiring that.

 

Make the back seat into a moulding as a bouyancy seat
amd also the bow seat . Put a screw out plastic port in each seat !! you can also get them with a water proof pocket that fits inside as a optional extra .They are a place to put your keys and lunch or what ever .
Make your transom strong enough to take a 4 to 6 hpower motor maybe also thk about a sailing version . the centre seat can be the top of the centreboard case support !. a kick up rudder and a pair of ss pivots one witha spring loaded clip so when you hit the bottom the rudder wont fall off
Pictures tell a story !!

 

maybe

found these to give you idea what i was talking about !!

 

these types are very unpopular here in ireland, ive seen many up for sale there like a laser sail boat, and they wont sell, ive seen them for sale last season and the same boat been advertised again this season.
the shakespere speed boats as well never sell. nobody wants them.
sailing is too much like hard work to them i suppose.

 

Whacker,
I think your first boat looks great, and I admire your conviction to repair the damaged mold and keep moving forward. The last thing I want to do is discourage you because I've faced similar situations like this myself, and sometimes the only thing a guy has in his favor is his dogged determination to see a project through to the end.

When a guy is working all alone in his garage there are no fans cheering you on, nor is there some cranky boss looking over your shoulder wondering out loud why it's taking so long when he would have been done days ago. You don't have a crew working with you or the accumulated knowledge of years of experience. All you have is you..and you have to learn everything.

I'm just being realistic...not pessimistic...when I say this could take a month to fix. When I examine some of the questions you've posed it's obvious you don't have much experience..why else would you not know how to use wet or dry sandpaper? Is it perhaps that you've never tried to sand anything to a perfectly glass smooth texture before? I promise I'm not being critical I'm simply observing and qualifing your level of expertise and comparing that to what I know of the task ahead.

For instance thining gel coat with anything and using that to try and fill voids or depressions in the mold surface is about the last thing I would recommend at this stage. Try this on your repair job and it will just slump or run out of where you intended it to stay. You're working with mostly vertical surfaces in the bow, along the transom corners, and along the top of the strakes. In this case gravity is not going to be your friend, so you have to thicken your gelcoat in order to give it some body, or it will end up in a puddle at the bottom of your mold. You don't have to take my word for...give it a go and see what happens.

As far as using "flow coat" or wax in your gelcoat...normally I don't use it in this situation. The reason is fairly simple...it's wax. The chances are I'm going to be building up layer upon layer of material...sanding off the highs and filling in the lows as I go. Gelcoat like most material shrinks as it cures and it will only hold itself so high before it slumps, so you have to work within it's limits. If I used a surface agent in the gelcoat then I would have to sand off even the lowest part of my patch before applying the next layer, and this is something I want to avoid since the whole point is to build it up as quickly as possible.

Sometimes I wish I was in China with Tunnels because then I wouldn't have to go out and sand down the kayak sitting in my garage for the fourth time this week, or wet sand those darn air scoop molds "again" and check for any pin holds I might have missed from the last time. But I'm not...it's just me...and I need to eat, sleep, and do something else once in a while besides sand, so I'll leave the 20 hour workdays to someone else, and be content with what I can do in a days time.

MM