The Hull.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I wanted something light, cheap and interesting. the search was on.
A few years ago I spotted a craft I hadn't see before. It was a twin fan design in turquoise and was called "The Outlaw"
I rather liked the look of that and after some chatting I found the Geoff Sweetman was instrumental in its design and build. At the time I wasn't on the lookout for a new craft but now I was. It turned out that Geoff had the moulds and was looking to sell was I set off down to Kent in August 2008 with a borrowed trailer, some cash and a slice of optimism.
What you can see in the picture above is my old friend Jake getting the bits off the trailer. What I actually got was a two-sided wooden mould and a GRP plug that had originally been taken from the mould and had then been modified to have a centre console. You can see the hull side of the mould is hanging down but that won't be used again so it doesn't matter. The top side is the planing surface mould and the plug is resting in it.
Making a new top mould.
First, I built a frame to hold the
plug. Waxed it well and put on two coats of gelcoat in
a colour I was unlikely to use for a hull (this makes
things easier later)
Next the matting goes on. If I remember correctly 6 layers of CSM but the job is so boring I may have mis-remembered.
Making the top of the hull.
Now for some reason we skip to the finished top half. I don't have any photos of the mould or the layup but basically, what you see here is two coats of red gelcoat. Under that is a layer of chop strand matting, a layer of Diolen and another CSM. You can also see that I was too keen on taking the picture to clean off the PVA mould release.