Coating a Boat

nhcovey

Hey, I'm making a small speed boat, its based on the Minimost boat plans. Its 1.8m long by 1.2m wide. The hull is made from 6mm marine plywood and the frame is made from thicker ply and 2x1's. I've two questions;
1. For gluing together, is there a specific glue that needs to be used or will normal wood-glue do?
2. For water-proofing/sealing the boat.. How can I go about this using products available in Ireland? I've looked up some stuff online but a lot of the chemicals I can't imagine being easy to find in your average Irish hardware store. I have no experience with this before, so any help at all would be appreciated.
Thanks.

fergal.b

Hi nhcovey and welcome, the best all round glue and sealer is epoxy resin and you can get it from most marine shops I like to use west systems as it's easy to work with just one pump of resin and harder each and mix so no weighing. There are also of youtube videos on how to use the stuff, to coat your boat you will have to use a fibreglass cloth I used 6 oz on mine, you lay it out and then wet it out with epoxy resin using a roller, paint brush or a piece of plastic like a credit card, it will take at least 3 coats to fill the weave with about a 3 hour gap between each coat.

This is the cloth dry



And this is it wet out.

nhcovey

Cheers man! Thats perfect, thanks for the help!

arthur daly

+1 for the west system,done a maxum 2300 about 8years ago with it