'We started doing it more than 20 decades back,' explained Intrepid president Ken Clinton, 'and it provides many advantages over the conventional hand-laying process. The Intrepid Way: High-End Custom Boat BuildingĪnother high-end builder of custom ships that employs the hand-laid, vacuum-infused resin technique is Intrepid Powerboats, known for its no-compromise approach to boatbuilding. It will need more forethought and is more costly but the results are worthwhile.' 'This process provides the laminate a far better resin-to-cloth ratio,' said Bonadeo. The resin is then pulled through the fiberglass and other laminates such as Kevlar and carbon dioxide. In accordance with Tony Bonadeo,'We love it as the material goes on nice and even.' Bonadeo uses the resin-infusion technique for his hulls and bigger parts where all the laminates are laid out dry, bagged and put under vacuum. It is produced and marketed by the weight per square foot to be used in various applications. Some companies handle the matter of woven roving print-through differently. Vacuum Infusion Technology In Boat Building To make sure that the appropriate amount of chop is being delivered, manufacturers like Sea Ray have a digital display that shows the burden of this chop that's being dispersed to allow the operator to meter it into the correct specifications for that particular hull. Hand-laid cloth is typically cut by an automated CNC machine to exacting standards and in the aforementioned hard-to-cover spots, workers can sometimes have too much overlap, wrinkled fabric or not enough protection, which necessitates a patch. Chop is easier to use in areas like corners and complex contours in the mold. Extra layers of chop can be added along with coring material to build up the desired depth of a strand. The deck cap is then put on and is put under vacuum for 24 hours, creating a one-piece hull that is incredibly strong.īuilders like Sea-Ray, Ranger and Malibu use the chopper gun to lay down the first layer of fiberglass to get around the pattern of woven roving from showing under the layer of gelcoat.Īfter layers of woven roving cloth are laid into position and impregnated with resin and hardening agents to build the hull up to its desired depth. The chopper gun is then used to seal it and bond fiberglass to the foam. The foam they use weights a hefty 6 pounds per cubic foot rather than the more prevalent 2-pound material typically utilized and becomes an essential part of the hull's structure. Rather than the usual way of pumping liquid foam into voids after the deck is in place for flotation and acoustical dampening, Everglades creates precision foam parts in their molds and puts them along with a moist bed of fiberglass chop that's sprayed evenly into the mold. This isn't only done on entry ships either.Įverglades Boats, founded by the late Bob Daugherty, an industry-innovator best known for his decades-long job at Boston Whaler, pioneered a unique boat-building process named RAMCAP. Producers who produce large quantities of boats adore the chopper gun because it's a quick way to use resin and fiberglass in one step. If the chop mixture is sprayed too thick, the hull will weigh too much and can negatively impact handling and performance. If the chopped mix is used too thin, the hull is poorer and subsequent layers of woven roving can 'print-through' or show up under the gelcoat, which is normally among the first objects coated into the hull mold as ship hulls are constructed from the exterior in.

Typically, its owner is among the most skilled employees in the factory for a fantastic reason. Running a chopper gun isn't a task a builder could give into a new-hire. Those using a vacuum process to deliver the resin skip this step because the vacuum cleans out any bubbles. In both processes, workers use little rollers to create the material lay flat and eliminate any bubbles which may form.

Many builders swear by it, but others eschew its usage and rather, hand-lay layers of cut sheets of woven roving fiberglass fabric down and wet it with resin. Perhaps the biggest breaking point in the boat-building world centers around the chopper gun, which feeds strands of fiberglass, Kevlar or carbon fiber roving through a device, chops it into manageable bits, combines it with resin and catalysts and permits the operator to spray it directly into a mold to build up what's going to become the ship's hull. Some boat builders use a fiberglass chopper gun to help construct a strand while others just say no. Every contemporary boat builder has their own distinct approach and process to fabricating vessels.

Chopper gun boats