C-Forum

I am looking into building an all fiberglass decked C1 does anybody know a way to do that. Is thsi a bad idea?

There is a GREAT article in the Canadian magazine "Rapid" by Ian Thomson from a few years ago on building a one-off boat from scratch. There is also a book by Charlie Walbridge on building boats.

To see some of my one personal exploits, check out:
http://www.cboats.net/maven.shtml

It is more work than you expect, will take more time, and more money, but is a lot of fun and very rewarding. Just remember to take the proper safety precautions-or you'll regret building a boat for the rest of your (shortened) life....

HI

I have done like 20 of those. It not relally wort the effort now unless you find something that does not exist in market.

Making a good kayak takes plenty of effort and you never get it perfect at first so you have to budget minimum of 2 protos.

It really time consuming and guitly expensive process. i would say that you get 2 plastic boats with the cost of one your own desing

here is rough cost estimate @ cheapest possible

plug for molding
500 € 200 Hours ... urethane foam is expensive

mold
1000€ make it good and strong

real kayak
minimum of 500 € use only good resins etc...

douple that with 2 since there is always something to improve on your first desing... i never good anything really good before 3 prototypes


marko

see the rec. boast section for new c-1 playboat soyou dont have to make your own !!

It usually only takes me two tries for a usable boat.

For low volume production, I don't use expensive materials for the mold. Epoxy (implied in Marko's mold cost) is not necessary for hand layup. Tooling polyester or vinylester with mat, e-glass cloth and roving will get the job done for about US$300 in materials.

If you can start off with a current boat hull (preferably in rotten condition) that you can modify, the plug and mold can be done in 50-100 hours, total. At least that's what it took me. Then I get lazy and let Millbrook do the molding.