My 1975 SeaCraft 25' Seafari rebuild thread

[flyingfrizzle]

Well, I can say Herman @ Hermco defiantly earns his money. If any body thinks he is high on his product they need to try to build their own cause it will change their mind. I was starting to think I should of just bought a bracket but I am on the short rows now. It has been a very labor intensive and time consuming process to get the tub laid up and the core in. I has took a bit more resin than I expected as well. Being the tub on this one is 60" wide and so big for the extra flotation I have burned threw some 1708, biax and csm. I lost count how many layers I installed but just started building it out to a desired thickness. The back of the bracket where the motor will mount ended up being 1/2" thick and 5/8"-3/4" thick in the corners. There rest of the mold is around 3/8" thick in most areas and 1/2" thick in the corners where it has the extra 1708 tape strips. After that there are two 3/4" Douglas fir marine ply cores that were pre-bonded together with two layers of csm, one on either side of the two layers of 1708, that are in the middle of the cores bonded together. The rest of the core was hot coated and soaked in thinned resin to seal the wood up. I wanted wood ply for the compression strength of the motor mounting bolts to prevent crushing of the core. The rest of the cores will be core cell. The core section that was premade was boned into the mold while the layers were installed so it is all a "green" lay up. I did smear in some thickened resin on the last layer of glass prior to laying the core in just to make sure all the voids were filled. I used a plastic card with 1/4" notches in it to spread the thick resin on top of the layers then laid the core in and clamped it in place and squeezed the air out and let it set up over night. I need to go back and add some layers over the core then it will be ready to come out of the mold. I was thinking that it would take around 10 gallons of vinyl ester but I am at 12 gals now and have to still add in the front of the core and all the stringers. That will take another 3 gallons I am guessing due to the stringers will not need much as they will be just a few layers over the core cell. I feel like I way over built this thing but I didn't want to under do it either. I will be hanging 850 lbs of motors off of this thing and will be doing 60 + mph in 3-4 seas and don't want to worry about it breaking. I just hope all the extra weight will not hurt the balance to bad. I am thinking about doing the swim platform out of epoxy and carbon fiber just to save weight at this point so I can keep the bracket under 200 lbs.

I didn't get many pics due to the intensive work laying it up and to the fact that I had resin on everything everywhere but here are a few: