Bracket Project - Page 5

Bryan A. · #41 02-18-2007, 09:25 PM

Nice job!!!!

I always hate it when the sand people come and raid my the beer stash too.

Chaos · #42 02-19-2007, 03:43 PM

Graet lookin bracket... you got me stoked to start one.

Bigshrimpin · #43 02-19-2007, 04:15 PM

Chaos - You're close to me . . . we'll have to meet up sometime. Strick and I were talking about going in together on a drum (55 gallons) of ISO Polyester resin sometime in March. Strick still has to build a console and bracket, his friend Jared needs to fabricate some parts, and I need a little more to finish up a few things. I have an account at composites one here in West Sacramento. I priced it out last week and it's 1/2 of what you'd pay for the stuff through Fiberglass Hawaii. If you need glass, brushes, rollers, etc. It's much cheaper to buy from them too. PM me and I can give you details. If I had used an iso polyester instead of vinylester and bought in bulk quantities . . . it would have cost me 50% less.

Bigshrimpin · #44 02-26-2007, 02:34 AM

A Little more progress . . . the middle of the platform was cored last week with 1/2 Marine Ply Squares. That really stiffened the platform up. So . . .

Today I built molds for two pieces that will be glued to the bottom of the swim platform . . . essentially coreing the visable part of the swim platform bottom . . . with two stick'on pretty molded pieces. The resin pool with the plywood squares is full of chopped roving . . . 4 layers of roving on the bottom and 3 layers of mat on top (the side that gets glued to the platform).

warthog5 · #45 02-27-2007, 09:30 AM

Not quite following what your doing with that reenforcement panel's?

I am surprised that you picked that access hatch that you did.

The Armstrong hatches are the way to go on that. Order them straight from Armstrong.

http://www.armstrongnautical.com/dckplates.htm

Bigshrimpin · #46 02-27-2007, 06:07 PM

Warthog - This is how chuck cored the bottom of his bracket.

I used a bunch of 6x6 inch squares and cored the center on mine. For the outer two visable/exposed sections of the platform . . . I made these two molded parts to "stick-on" like stamps . . . that way the bottom of the platform will have a nice finished look to it.

You're making me think twice about my choice of hatch, but I've used one of these Bomar hatches on my brothers boat in the splashwell. It has been water tight since 2002 when I installed it and he keeps his boat on a mooring all summer (it's got a LOW transom too). The bracket should be very high out of the water . . . and with 5200 around the lip it shouldn't leak.

This was how they cored the hatches on the boats originally. only they did a better job.

Bigshrimpin · #47 03-07-2007, 03:02 AM

Ran out of epoxy after the stringers . . . so I got to bend over at west marine and pay $141 for one gallon of epoxy resin and hardener (that's what 5 gallons of Vinylester cost). Anyway . . . after I got over it . . . I was lucky enough to get the bracket glued together and taped (3 layers of 4" 1708 tape bonding the platform to the tub from the inside). I even painted the inside before it was glassed together. Came out pretty good considering I couldn't see what I was doing inside the bracket.

Joemc · #48 03-08-2007, 05:13 PM

do you have the specs on this and do you bolt it to the transom

1bayouboy · #49 03-08-2007, 05:53 PM

And you used epoxy on the bracket...???
You mentioned vinylester......and that you and strick might get 55G of polyester...??

Bigshrimpin · #50 03-08-2007, 07:24 PM

The molded pieces (top platform and tub) were done in vinylester. The stringers were done with epoxy and I bonded the top platform and the bottom tub together using epoxy. Epoxy supposedly has stronger secondary bonding properties. I used a little over 10 gallons of vinylester and 1 gallon of epoxy in the project.

I got some very good pricing on ISO polyester in the 5 gallon pails, so I don't think we'll need to do a drum unless chuck wants to build a boat from scratch.