Rug bottom boat

[sdowney717]

I was thinking of taking a berber woven rug stapling it and stretching it over the frames of an old mahogany plank on frame hull (37 foot)where the old rotten planks were removed and saturating the rug with epoxy resin inside and out. The rug would swell up and end up around 3/8 inch thick. The berber rug is made of a synthetic nylon and polypropylene weave. It would be easier than replanking and being epoxy, no more wood worms and rot. It would use a lot of epoxy, but how about getting the rug well saturated in epoxy? Can you thin epoxy or are some thinner than others? I would leave the hull sides above the water as normal, this would only be for the bottom
Thanks for any ideas on this.

[Ron Williamson]

Would you bet your life on it?I wouldn't.
R

[On Vacation]

I take it as this is a joke post, I hope? Did someone tell you to do this?

[Cosmo Lengro]

With the cold weather even TROLLS must be chilly living under that bridge.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[sdowney717]

These rugs are totally synthetic and have a lot of elasticity. You can get them in long lengths so the entire bottom from stern to bow would cover in one sheet on each side of the keel.
I was reading up on Xynole, Versatex, Dynel and other polypropylene fabrics. A woven rug with the berber pattern has the material woven thru the backing sort of like woven roving. The rug's back would face outward and be smooth to the water
My wife says this is a crazy idea but I wonder. I think it would work. I know of some old boats that are being given away.

[N. Scheuer]

Suggest saturating the rug on your garage floor, using lon-hair paint rollers to spread the epoxy evenly. Then get three friends (so you'll have one person on each corner) to help flop the saturated rug into position over the frames and stretch it taut.

You'll end up with epoxy all over your staple gun, of course, but that won't be too hard to clean up.

Spend the bucks for good quality Berber.

Moby Nick

[Venchka]

Originally posted by sdowney717:
...My wife says this is a crazy idea

Trust your wife.

OK, folks thought most inventors were crazy. Here's a thought.

1. Buy a sample square of carpet. They seem to be about 18x24. Measure carefully so you can estimate the total for the boat.

2. Saturate it with epoxy. Measure quantity required.

3. Let the sample cure. Weigh it carefully.

4. Expand this sample to the total needed for the boat. Figure the $$'s for carpet at $25/sq. yard and the cost of epoxy and more importantly the weight added to the boat.

My guess is that the epoxy saturated carpet over planks & frames of dubious strength just might rip the boat apart.

And no, you shouldn't trust your life to this scheme! :D

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Thanks for the laugh :D :D :D

[ken mcclure]

:rolleyes: There will be no experiment on this one.

[Ian McColgin]

Just incase this is not a joke: fiberglass as we call it or glass reinforced fiber is a fairly interesting way to make a structure. It was preceeded with a lot of interesting and strange approaches, some of which worked despite how odd they sound, like paper mache boats and laquored paper boats. But they all use the stength of the fabric in some way. Even chopper molded boats have some strength carried on the fibres.

All you're making is a pile of resin that, given your choise of fiber matrix, will have less strength that just resin by itself, and tha't very brittle.

Even were you to attempt this project with more rational materials, actual fibreglass cloth for example, it will not work as well as properly planking with wood. The glass repair will not stay in place.

Finally, what you propose is far more expensive in material and far more work in reality than getting some wood and doing it right.

G'lcuk

[pjwalsh]

Rug bottom boat - I kinda like it! berber isn't cheap though. We just replaced our carpeting in the bedrooms with (cheaper type...) berber, $1.90 ft^2. Definitely try it out with a carpet remnant as suggested earlier, and even then don't expect a boat treated this way to last very long or be very safe. Looking at our carpet it seems as if most of the fiber is running verticaly relative to the plane of the carpet so I would not hold out any hope for great strength, though it would add thickness nicely.

On an aside, in high school some friends and I noodled around with rock n' roll - our best (worst?) of many bad semi-original compositions was "Rug burn baby", but I like rug bottom boat even better

[Kevin G]

I would get three berbers, that way there is 'No Waiting"

[whb]

Sdowney

I have bucked the crowd all my life. Sometimes it has worked great, more often it worked okay and sometimes it was a dismal failure.

I see two problems with your approach.

The first is going over planks with any sort of skin is trying to force a boat that normally moves in many ways into a solid structure. This will eventually cause it to rip apart from not being able to move.

The second concern I have is with weight. 3/8s of an inch of goop is going to drop the waterline on your boat a lot. I'm guessing your 3/8's is going to come close to 3 pounds per square foot.

If you are bound and determined I would get an old clinker built row boat in somewhat unsalvageable condition and try to fix it this way and see what you think. Still won't be a great test as the movement in a small boat won't be as much as in a large one.

Good Luck and play safe,

Howard

[ken mcclure]

:D :D :D :D

Aim for the belly-button next time, Kevin. That shot may have been a little high.

:D :D :D :D

[N. Scheuer]

Actually saw something like this DONE once.

There was an old Star Class sailboat kept on a trailer for a couple of years at the Yacht Club in Michigan City, IN. She had a little rot visible at the top of the stem.

One day I noticed that she'd been fixed. The owner (a guy I knew a bit less than slightly) had laid one of those stretchy loosely-woven nylon diswashing rags over the stem area and slathered some clear resin all over it.

The mute Star seemed to cry out, "SOMEBODY SAVE ME FROM THIS IDIOT"!

Moby Nick