fiberglass over wood pontoons

Hi, I posted this mistakenly in the design forum,,,, I want to make plywood pontoons and completely enclose them with glass and polyester resin,,,,could I get 5 to ten years out of them on a trailered pontoon boat. I can get the polyester for 10 bucks a gallon so i'd have very little in the pontoons and could do a sweet deck and go on the scrounge for other pontoons and still be fishing come summer.

 

Hi Wade,

How's the cabin cruiser coming along?
I don't see why you can't get 5 to 10 years out of wooden pontoons?
If you do a proper job overlaminating, I assume complete new build? Otherwise we would get the same thread as for the cabin cruiser.
I would still make some sort od access to the inside of the pontoon, incase you have to make some repaires.
What's a trailered pontoon boat?

 

A friend of mine built a houseboat and floated it on pontoons built from plywood,only he filled them with empty two-litre drink bottles with the caps on.Sounds really cheap,but he lived on the thing for three years in the Bay River and never had any problems.At least with his pontoons,that is.

 

No problem. I've built plywood/polyester skiffs that stayed out in the weather and lasted five years.

 

I assume that you are refering to a catamaran type boat which is easily built using glass over plywood construction. Just make sure that you align your "pontoons" correctly during assembly, or you will dramatically shorten the lifetime of the boat due to stresses on the superstructure. You might also want to adapt your trailer to provide support at key points for your boat when moving it about.Have fun! It should be an interesting project. B.T.W., I have even seen people build small houseboat/worksheds using floats constructed of 40 gallon plastic drums with sealed bungs. so your idea sounds feasible.

 

If you're around rivers, ask around at the smaller marina's, there are often discarded pontoon boats that you can sometimes just have for taking them away. They won't be pretty and will need tons of work, but the pontoons will usually last darned near forever. Heck of alot easier to start with the basic framework instead of having to start from scratch.

Bill H.