T&T: The Decks Are Next

[Bob]

I'm replacing the decks, some rotted beams, cabin and Fly Bridge surfaces of a
56' cruiser with a urethane board covered with glass cloth and coated with
epoxy.  It will never rot again. The hull is solid fiberglass laminate about
one inch thick so, no problem there. The material is expensive but, easy to
work with... just like wood.

Also, recently I noticed at the local junkyard a 50 foot fiberglass fishing
boat.  The hull is 7mm solid laminate without any core.  The junkyard said
they would give me the boat and I'm trying to get them to let me tear it apart
in their yard cause I have no place to put it... They will get back to me as
to whether they will let me do the work there.  It costs them a lot of money
to break it down, basically pulverize it, and send it off to a land fill.

Has anyone restored their former decks, cabin, etc surfaces by using
fiberglass from a discarded fiberglass boat?  This boat has some nice straight
lengths of fiberglass on the sides of the hull that would make nice deck and
cabin surfaces.  Since it is 7mm instead of the 10mm thickness of the orginal
plywood material on my boat, I would have to improvise to increase the
thickness of the material from fishing boat by 3mm on the outside surfaces to
match the original thickness on my boat.  But, the savings in costs of
material would be great.  I could reap very long lenths of 7mm thick
fiberglass laminate 65 centimeters wide from the sides of this hull the
insides of which are explosed to the elements cause of the walk around cabin
design of the fishing boat.

I don't know how hard it would be to cut through 7mm fiberglass laminate, but
a test cut with some power tools that I have would be worth a try.  The
exposed ribs on the inside could be removed by a sawsall.

They will give me an answer after the New Year holidays.

Comments anyone?