Batboat Rebuild: Day 45 August 19th, 2009

Took a few days off to move my stuff out of the old house and into the new one as the new gallon of resin was on its way from Florida. 14th gallon ordered so far!

Knowing it was coming in on this day I got the the deck under the bow ready to be fiberglassed.


Newspaper was taped around the parameter to keep sanding dust from getting under the deck as I sanded with a 40 grit pad to remove dust and debris from the surface and make the PL Adhesive over the screw heads level.



Some more fine pop found at Hagerty's of Zilwaukee. The last one for long time.


The sanding dust is cleaned up and the paper outtta there.


I glassed on two more cuts of fiberglass cloth. 1.5 csm and 6 oz woven hexan with 2 to 3 inches of overlap. This time they were 60 inches long by 15 and I found that 20 oz of resin was just enough to glass them in and add a couple more coats on top.

These turned out far more better than my first attempt. Hardly any bubbles at all.

The last remaining two and a half feet of deck under the bow wasn't finished until after I moved.


A bead of PL was injected along the deck / transom gap to prepare it for glassing. I've found the the fiberglass cloths want to dip down into these gaps. Plugging them with PL construction Adhesive solves the problem.


This is a detail of one of the original stringers. Glastron used a woven fiberglass cloth and nothing else on this one. The deck was staple gunned on top while this was still wet with resin. It lasted for years before it went to rot from neglect.

How long will this Batboat last beyond my years? :)


I never thought rotted wood like this would be so valuable. Without retaining these from the demolition of the Batboat I would have been lost on what to do. Invaluable patterns were reconstructed from these and used to rebuild the structural of this anti-crime water cruiser.

Can't take them with me when I move, and I wasn't going to take them, so they and other useful fragments were waiting to be burned.

I started working at around 4 and ended at 9. The neighbors dog was barking nearly all the time. What a nuisance. It was out in the dark and rain into the night yelping away until way past 10:30. The police in Zilwaukee are nonexistent and the department exists out of local politics only. Glad I'm days from moving out.