C-Forum

Does anyone know anything about this process? Are there any web sites out there documenting this process? I've got a boat with badly damaged royalex (unrepairable) and got the idea to make some hull alterations and make a glass clone of the old girl. Any help greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Mark

Well, I suggest you first contact the designer of your boat and get permission to mold it. While it may be legal to slightly modify a shape, and then call it your own, it seems to be to be in poor taste. You can be sure the designer spent a lot of time and trouble developing the boat.

Clearly, some boat builders will give you permission (e.g., Dagger is great), while others will probably not even respond to requests. Some, of course, will want a per-boat design fee.

The process is striaght forward. Buy a copy of The Boat Bulder's Manual (Charile Walbridge, ed.). Pop the gunwales, bondo the divits, sand the heck out of it, spot putty the whole boat, sand the heck out of it, wax, lay-up a mold.

Be sure to follow Walbridge's safety recommendations.

If you have time in your life for an additional (additional to paddling) full-blown hobby, boat building may be a good idea.

Any boat that I would make would be for my own personal use and not for sale, therefore I don't feel it would be in bad taste at all nor would I even consider contacting the manufacturer. If I were to make it to sell, I wholeheartedly agree that it would be morally, ethically and legally wrong, but that is not the case. If people didn't modify other people's designs, there would be very few things today as we know them.

As a boat designer and manufacturer, I would have to agree 100% with Roy and DISagree 100% with markdc.
JKaz

I am just guessing (having not done what you propose because most ABS boats have the major design flaw of an open topside) but here are my thoughts...at no charge:

1. Pay close attention to what Roy says about stealing (aka "copying") a boat design. You never know when you will run into the designer or one of his good buddies at your favorite river. When that happens, it doesn't matter what you think about the ethics of stealing his design. All that will matter is how the designer feels about it. Your rationalization (which does nothing but assuage your own guilt) simply will be of no consequence.

Everyone owns their boat for their "own personal use". And if you use the boat design of someone else, you owe them for the effort they made to create it...and which you did not. The boat design is the property of the person that created it. If you want to use their design, you have to settle with the designer (one way or another.)

More than one boat with a pirated (stolen) design has had its bow and stern removed with a chain saw while the design thief was asleep or even just having lunch.

One guy was standing right next to his recently built pirated boat in an Ohiopyle parking lot when it was de-ended . (What can you say to someone holding a roaring chain saw as it cuts through your kevlar and s-glass composite?) The saw-wielding boat builder/designer asked the astonished owner of the (now) three shattered pieces of fiberglass scrap that had been a shiny, pirated kayak just seconds before, "How do you liked the latest modifications I have made to my boat design? You are the first person to own one."

Paddling a pirated design is simply bad form. If you want to paddle a good design, pay the person that did the considerable work that it took to create it. Otherwise, invest your own time and money and make your own design "for personal use." If it is a really good design, and you are an astute bussiness person and very good craftsperson, you might be able to sell enough of your boats to recover your costs. Just don't count on making a living doing so, and don't quit your day job.

2. An ABS hull, even with the gunnels and thwarts attached, is likely to be too flexible in spots to successfully mold without being stiffened. You have to have something pretty rigid as a plug to get a mold that will yield a close copy of the boat design. If you remove the gunnels, molding the extremely flexible ABS hull will quickly become a messy job with little chance for good results.

3. You might try PVAing the inside of your ABS hull, then filling it with a mix of a two-part expandable foam. This open cell foam product comes as a liquid sold by the gallon. It will cost you plenty to fill most open boat hulls. (How many gallons will your boat hull hold? Divide that number by the expansion factor of the foam and multiply that by the cost per gallon, which was $25 per gallon more than 20 years ago.) Then pop the foam plug from your old hull, get out the epoxy, bondo, and sandpaper, and get to work making a foam plug you can take a mold off of. You can do your "modifications" to your foam plug before laying up your mold. At this point you have spent close to as much as the cost of used ABS boat in very good condition.

4. I think the best you can hope for is to do a one-off pirated copy in glass from your ABS boat. Since you just want one "for personal use" and not any more for selling to your pals, a one-off should be plenty.

Considering that your hull is already just a piece of unrepairable junk, I doubt the amount of work required to make it worth copying will be worth what you will have to paddle when your one-off copy is finished.

Those types of boats are usually pretty hard to look at, and seldom last for more than a very short time on the river. Everything from resin control problems to pin holing to excessive air bubbles seems to be evident in the laminates of most one-offs I have seen. Such poorly constructed laminates are not only ugly to behold, they just don't stand up to river abuse for long. It takes a well-constructed laminate to make a long-lasting whitewater boat.

5. So why not contact a professional boat builder with legal rights to make the design you favor? Most of the custom builders have legal molds of all the good ABS designs. Just buy one of their glass boats. Then, if you really want to steal a design by copying a legal boat, you can mold your new glass model of your favorite ABS design. (The best time to rip off a design is from a brand new boat.)

Just remember to keep your ears tuned for a chain saw buzz when you leave your pirated boat design unattended on top of your vehicle.

Frankly, after reading your self-righteous reply to Roy's remarks, I hope you spend plenty of time and even more money creating a real dog of a glass boat to paddle as a replacement for your busted ABS boat. After you have learned how much of both it takes to make a plug, mold, and a composite boat you will be able to think more clearly, and maturely, about using the property of others without permission.

How about posting the name of boat design you want to copy? Maybe the designer will want to contact you!

I must say Roy and our guest are right on here. It costs you almost nothing to contact the boat manufacturer, and if they say "fine" or "send us a few bucks per boat" you can build it with a clear conscience. Folks who design boats DO NOT make a living off it, and I dare say few recoup their initial costs if you factor their time in. What about Jim Snyder? Well, he makes paddles (and very nice, expensive ones at that) as I recall. And he is a VERY skilled designer with A LOT of experience.

Regarding pulling a boat or mold off...assuming you get permission, go ahead and try it! I've found that boat-building (esp. designing my own boat in the end...) is very rewarding. Long, hard, terribly boring at times but rewarding. And it's a great way to get new ideas out there for everyone to try out offer an opinion on.

Okay, Okay!! I guess I'll ixnay my little project. I didn't even know if it was possible to do and thought it would be a cool and rewarding project if it could be done. I didn't realize making a one off copy/variation would create such a stir. Back in the day when someone would sit on one of my cassette tapes and break it, I would tape it back together and make a copy so I could continue to enjoy. My train of thought on the boat was basically in the same vein, although I see now that many people would like to derail that train. "Pirating" is certainly not my bag, although, it seems, my ignorance makes me guilty of that in some eyes. I just love boats and boating and chopping up my old canoe and sending it away in the back of the garbage truck just seems so wrong. I apologize if the expression of my opinion came off as self-righteous, and I forgive you if yours came off as arrogant.

Nobody said don't do it. Everyone did say to contact the designer to get permission before proceeding. It is no big deal to do so, and it is the certainly the civil thing to do. If you can't get permission to copy a particular design, then move on to another boat (or at least to another designer.)

Seems to me everyone has made that point quite clearly, and they have also told you either how to get the information you need or pointed out some of issues you will need to resolve before you get the boat you want.

Even a professional builder/designer posted and agreed on where you need to go for information on building a boat and how to proceed to handle the design rights. (Reread Roy's comments for content other than about copying the hull. Note that Kaz agreed with everything Roy said.)

I think Roy has done plenty of one-offs, and has described how he has done some of them on this website. I may be misremembering here, but I think he held court on the subject a couple years ago.

Have you done any looking in the C-Forum archives using the search feature? There have been lots of boat building threads over the years. (Unfortunately, a particularly informative one about plug and mold building was lost just over this weekend. The capt is a very knowledgable builder and his remarks are especially well received by me. Thanks, capt.)

And, you can thank Sir Adam for getting all the older posts copied over from the Concordia site. It is a wealth of information for those willing to make the small investment of time required to search them.

BTW, when you bought your ABS boat, you purchased a design to enjoy for the useful life of the ABS hull, not for the rest of your life!

You did the same thing when you bought your car. Do you expect to be able to be able to replace the engine when it wears out with a box of bolts and belts attached to some scrap metal parts that you have glued into the shape of an automobile motor? How about your refrigerator? Don't you think you will have to pay for a replacement compressor of the same design, and not be able to use one intended to spray paint?

Finally, I suggest you forget about who is being arrogant here, and think about this:

If you have problems following less than crystal clear directions (and counsel) such as has been freely given here, or you are a person that tends to give up on a project when things don't go exactly as you planned (or imagined) that they should go, then fiberglass boat building (even an open boat one-off) is probably not a good idea for you.

But if you want to learn some patience (actually, an extraordinary amount of patience) and develop a keen ability to pay attention to details while working with your hands (and using dangerous chemicals), and you have plenty of time and money to spend before you get anything in the water (this is going to cost you at least as much as a new boat would have cost from your local boat dealer and will take several of your nicest weekends when you could have been paddling, at a minimum) then call or write the designer to arrange for copying rights, get the Walbridge boat builders manual (it is more poorly organized and almost as poorly written as this paragraph), and order the several hundred dollars worth of materials required from JRS's website. If you are retired or unemployed, you might have something to paddle before July 4th. Otherwise, it will be probably be closer to Christmas.

Let us know when (if) you get started. We all actually love this stuff.

If you like the boat design enough to consider making a mold from it, it may be very much worth your time to contact the designer and see if they would grant molding rights. There are a good number of canoe companies with very nice designs that have enther gone out of business or stopped making canoes - If your ABS boat was made by one of them, the chances are good that they will let you.

Other than the above mentioned Legal/Moral issues the process is very much like making a mold off of any plug. The first thing you need to decide is whether or not you still want to be able to paddle the old boat. If you do, your options may be fairly limited. I'd suggest using parafin wax - paint the whole canoe with it and then using a heat gun (gotta keep it moving) smooth the surface as much as possible.

If you use this method, you can figure on a lot of sanding on the inside surface of the mold. All of the curves are going to be concave - This is always hard to sand.


If you are not going to paddle the boat again, then you can use body filler - just like adam has been doing with the Maven.. It is not going to bond too well, so don't beat the plug around too much.

Once you get it smoothed out, paint the whole thing with spray primer (auto body will work fine), wet sand to 600 grit and then
apply mold release wax - probably 5 - 6 coats. Then spray on your pva - if you have the patience to let each coat dry fully, 3 or 4 coats will give you a barrier like saran wrap - no way the mold will stick.

As for stiffening the hull - 2 part urethane foam is great, but it is hard to release - I have tried PVA, but the curing foam gives off H20 and dissolves the PVA - the release is not an issue if you are not planning to paddle it again (or if you decide to paddle it again you can carve a custom saddle out of the foam)

One other thing to consider - the design of the canoe - if the gunnels are recurved, if the bow is very narrow, etc, you may actually need to split the mold at the bow and stern, or worst case make a 2 part mold

Good Luck

F

I'll also agree I miss that post we lost-I mentioned the other methods of plug / boat building to the kind soul that is helping me out and he was interested to hear what was working well for others. We DO have a lot of information on this site, so be sure to be as specific as you can in your search (unless you want to read a lot of posts like some of us:) ).

I started this post with really just the technical aspects and feasability of the project in mind, not knowing anything about it or anyone that has done it. Now I know that it can't be done easily, quickly or cheaply. Some fairly pronounce tumblehome would appear to dictate a two piece mold that was mentioned above; that is definitely out of my league! I can see me trying to finish a river run with a boat held together in the middle with good old duct tape! My experience with all of the involved techniques is literally zero and as Clint Eastwood once said, "a mans got to know his limitations".