Fiberglass boat building started in the mid 1900’s and today fiberglass is the first choice of production boat builders. If a company plans to build multiple copies of a boat design then fiberglass or FRP (Fiber reinforced plastic) is the way to go. If someone wanted to build a custom one design they might consider cold molded epoxy or one of the other methods available to one-off builders.
But I want to talk about building a production design so I thought it would be fun to show how a design gets from the designer’s desk top to the boat show. I’ll post a series of images over the next few weeks that will give an overview of how the process is managed.
Once a designer has made all of the basic decisions on length, beam and general styling cues, the drawing files are refined to add every detail from radii to curves: essentially the boat is drawn in the smallest detail. Once that has happened the process of building molds can begin.
Last Monday I traveled to Ft Myers, Florida to see the hull and deck plugs of the new Sabreline 34 Hard Top Express. While I was there I captured some images to show how marine grade FRP tooling is built.
Step one is to cut and stand the "sections" of the design. Imagine taking a loaf of bread and slicing it at equal intervals along it’s length. The shop then takes those "slices" and stands them up so that the skeleton of the hull (or deck) is then framed. Here’s a typical powerboat mold at this stage.