Turning the ugliest boat in Costa Rica into a respectable 28' Center Console Diesel

[GringoJohn]

Originally Posted by swamp snorkler

This thread is moving along nicely.

What motor to you plan on putting in it? Maybe I missed it?

Cummins B series 210hp with a ZF 63A 1.5 to 1

[TidewateR]

damn! now THAT'S a console! She's really going to start looking more and more like a boat soon.

[GringoJohn]

Well today was a productive day again like yesterday. We started off by rounding all the console edges.



And then we stuck it in the boat and glassed it in!









I really like the boat with the console in it, it isn't a panga anymore, we're officially a center console. The console was a little wider than I expected, but there is a ton of room on the inside for the battery, bathroom and then quite a bit of dry storage. It does look a little further forward than I had in my head, but I'll make the roof/tower a little further back and it should look normal. We cut out the door as well and here is the door:



I was hoping to do the door in one piece, but it will hit the side of the boat, we're going to have to cut it in half, but that's ok it's light and it's got a good shape to it.

And then so we didn't get lazy tomorrow, we cut out the front bench and glassed one side. Tomorrow we might have the front bench in the boat. Under the front bench, we are going to try to get 8 rod hangers where I can fit my offshore gear, that will be the tricky part for tomorrow.





The bench looks HUGE, but after i put the border in the front of the boat, it'll only be about 22-24 inches deep where you can sit. So it's a nice deep bench, but not as big as it looks in the photos. Tomorrow we are going to see if we can get that bench stuck to the boat! And I might start cutting out the motor box and leave it drying on the table. I'm starting to get more and more ambitious, we have to stop construction in 18 days so i want to get as far as i can!

[GringoJohn]

Originally Posted by TidewateR

damn! now THAT'S a console! She's really going to start looking more and more like a boat soon.

yeah, i really like the console, and it only weighs 37 pounds. Check out the new pictures of the installed console above!

[swamp snorkler]

I check this thread every morning! Yall are moving pretty swiftly on it, some rebuild take years.

Last night I was laying in bed looking at Costa Rica stuff online, my wife siad you really want to do to Costa Rica huh? I said oh yeah! Who knows maybe one I'll be fishing on it!

[Shawn Braquet]

Originally Posted by swamp snorkler

I check this thread every morning! Yall are moving pretty swiftly on it, some rebuild take years.

Last night I was laying in bed looking at Costa Rica stuff online, my wife siad you really want to do to Costa Rica huh? I said oh yeah! Who knows maybe one I'll be fishing on it!

This thread makes me want to fish on it. Really enjoying all of the play by play pictures.

[GringoJohn]

I am really excited about fishing on it too. Yesterday the help caught me standing in front of the console pushing down the imaginary gas lever, i got made fun of...

[GringoJohn]

Didn't get as much done as I wanted, but we did get the basic idea of the under bench rod holders in place, we'll finish that out tomorrow and then I'll post some pics. The idea is the front piece will have four holes in it to put 4 rods in, and then the back two holders will have two holes in each side. And 4 per side will be 8 rods. After we took this picture we got everything glassed up.



And then this is the motor box on the table. The first view is side view of the motor box and then the second picture is the rest of the box on the table.





Hopefully we'll get the rod holders figured out tomorrow and the bench installed, and maybe the box put together...we'll see

[GringoJohn]

Got a little done today. We started by hole sawing the front rod holder that will be under the seat. I'm going to buy Harold a ruler, one of the holes got away from him, but it's under the bench, so we decided to leave it.



After we got the holes made in the rod holder, we put the bench where it goes and then marked and cut down the center to get it at the right height. This kind of shows how light it is, this already is all glassed up except for the top, and the little guy carries it like it's nothing.



And then we got it where it went and put the cabosil in the seam:





And then we glassed it in. I haven't done the ends yet because I'm not sure how I'm going to do them yet. We are trying to just knock out the bulk of the big construction and then go back and hit the details. That's why we have this crazy pace, but finishing everything up is going to be at least a months worth of fairing

On a different note, the seat looks HUGE because the border isn't on the boat yet. Once we put the border on the boat the seat will be more normal sized.





And then we decided to put the motor box together.





But, after putting it together, realized it was going to be a little too wide and there wasn't enough area to pass by on the side, so we stopped that and we're going to make it about 4 inches narrower tomorrow and we finished up the front bench. More pics tomorrow if we get something finished!

[GringoJohn]

One step closer in finishing up our super Quepos fishing boat! Today we put the box together. Pretty easy, we have a board in every corner and we screw through the foam into the boards to hold the thing together until the resin/cabosil mix dries, and then we pull the screws out and the boards and grind down the corners and glass the thing! I got a couple of questions after we did the console on how we made round corners. I tried to explain the best I can, but a picture is worth a thousand words! First, since we are dealing with 3/4 inch sheets of foam (after glass) we marked out 3/4 of an inch on both side of the corner.



Then we use the 4 inch grinder with 36 grit to knock down a little material off the corner, but we finish it by hand with 36 grit cloth backed paper and a small board. Since the top sheet sits on the bottom sheet, you don't make it all the way through.





And then when you get the curve you are looking for, you glass the corners with an additional 1708 strip 12 inches wide. Also, don't forget to sand the first 8 inches with 36 grit to rough it up before you glass in the corners, we use the 4.5 inch grinder with 36 grit on EVERYTHING we are going to stick glass to every time.

[I make oil]

I really like what your doing. Do you think the room between the front seating area and the console is a bit tight? Maybe cutting those corners 45 degrees would make it easier to pass through there? I imagine when it's a bit rough it will get tight to pass there.

Great work and this boat is definitely something to be proud of. If I ever make it to Costa Rica I know who I'm fishing with.

[GringoJohn]

It's a little better than it looks, I'd say about 10 inches, but it's tight. I can't cut it because the poles fit in there exactly at that length and we are going to loose a lot of bench when we do the border. I'll go look at it on Monday and maybe we can do something with that corner to get a little more space?

[GringoJohn]

Well, here's the side view with the motor box installed.



Looks like the box will make a great seat to fight fish from and there is still plenty of room behind it for fishing.



We still haven't put the last section of floor in, I have to do some welding for the rudder and piston back there, but when that is installed there should be some good fishing space. The box is the perfect height to sit on, and I can sit of the box and still see over the console.

And then the box had a little give in the top, so I went ahead and put some reinforcements on the inside, and we cabosiled all the inside corners and glassed them as well. Should make the top rigid, and keep it from breaking when I have 4 fat guys sitting on top



And then we moved on to the borders, which really haven't had me too excited to do. Center Consoles, benches and motor boxes are just more fun for some reason. So, i don't know why the fiberglass does that, but the border was really distorted after we took it out of the mold. I don't know if you can see too well from the pictures, but check out the edge:



So what we did is get some 1X2's and just screw them to the edge to make it straighter.





We are going to do it like it was wood, but with corecell. Going to build a frame out of corecell pieces, and i'm thinking in the back we are going to make the border 5.5 inches wide with a 2.5 inch inside piece. I wanted a bit wider, but the motor box is kind of wide, even after we narrowed it, so I'm worried about having plenty of space to walk by. I spent the last 4 hours today cutting out parts to make the frame for the side borders (are those called gunnels?). I don't know that this is the best picture, but here's what i finished up with:



That picture doesn't make too much sense, but after i trim the excess glass off and put a few on the boat tomorrow, I'll post a picture and that'll probably show what we are trying to do better than explaining it! Just got in and it's 10pm (we started at 6am), so please forgive any typo's, i'm going to bed!

[keakar]

Originally Posted by GringoJohn

It's a little better than it looks, I'd say about 10 inches, but it's tight. I can't cut it because the poles fit in there exactly at that length and we are going to loose a lot of bench when we do the border. I'll go look at it on Monday and maybe we can do something with that corner to get a little more space?

well then when you make the mold for making more of them you can extend it 2 more feet to allow more room for getting around up there.

or have you given up on the idea of making a mold to create more hulls like this one?

[GringoJohn]

Originally Posted by keakar

well then when you make the mold for making more of them you can extend it 2 more feet to allow more room for getting around up there.

or have you given up on the idea of making a mold to create more hulls like this one?

I still have the male mold and I'm going to make at least one more of these, maybe 2 but i want to see the performance numbers before I decide. I spent most of the day walking around on the boat as we are doing the border caps right now, and it's really not that tight and it didn't bother me much. To get more space up there, I'll have to move the motor back a little, I'm going to need to see how the balance is on this one when we splash it and after a couple of weeks of hard fishing I'll know where to make the adjustments on the next one!

[swamp snorkler]

From the deck up the outer shell of the hull is call the bulwarks, those are gussets, what your calling decking is the gunwale.


Boat is looking great, has really nice lines

[GringoJohn]

Easily the most tedious job of building my new Quepos Fishing Boat, we put the first part of the cap frames on the side of the boat today. I cut them all out yesterday which was a job, but putting them on and lining them up was quite a task today.

Here's a shot mid day. We put the stick across side to side to line up the angles. They were pre cut before i glassed them, but we still had to adjust them a bit.



Then here was when i finally finished them:



And a front view



and then we glassed them in:



We left the next piece on the table drying for tomorrow to install, we might get the cap on tomorrow, we'll see?

[I make oil]

Looking good.

[GringoJohn]

Not as far as I'd thought we'd get today, that was really tough finding good lines. I cut the pieces out of the foam and they were pretty straight, but after glassing them, recutting them, and then sticking them to the wall, they weren't straight anymore and it took all day to line everything up and get the knee rail stuck on. But, i was happy how everything turned out. In the front, we are doing a different system, and we have some stuff on the table drying to install tomorrow, and then in the middle of the transom, we are going to try to do a cool live well, so i left a space open for that.

[GringoJohn]

Originally Posted by I make oil

Looking good.

Thanks!