Batboat Rebuild: Day 44 August 12th, 2009

According to my notes, today was another 8 hour day and a great deal was accomplished.

My motivation was the stoner neighbors who chained up a yelping, starving dog along side of my house near my bedroom window. The Batboat was going to be my U-haul out of Zilwaukee and I needed the deck in, pronto!

My car had started to resemble a tribute to the fuzz covered Batmobile that was on tour in the 1970s. Its all from fiberglass cloth which gets everywhere. Don't work on this stuff near your house. It is hard to get rid of.



I had no other flat surfaces to work with so measuring and cutting was done on the hood. lol!

The center part of the deck was fiberglassed and in and it turned out good.

Instead of glassing on 20 inch sections of cloth I did it in 10 to 15 inch increments with two to three inch overlap between layups. It was easier to manage and the result was less bubbles under the 6oz hexel.

Work began on reconstructing the bilge bowl by creating a frame work with strips of 1.5 oz. chopped strand mat. This is all that was done that day. The rest was finished later.

Another hot one outside. Came back from Hagarty's of Zilwaukee with this bottle. I've rarely drank pop in the past 20 years but the sugar gave me a pick up.

This was the best root beer I ever had.


Getting ready to screw the last part of the deck in. I was nearly out of resin again and ordered one more gallon.

This was the 14th gallon ordered! The stuff still went fast despite my using it more sparingly.


Bought another 28 oz. cartridge of the PL before starting out the day. The sixth so far.

The stringers under the bow have a very slight upward curve from the layers of 1708 fiberglass so I used a lot of PL Adhesive and my own weight to get the deck to lay on top of them completely flat as I screwed it down. Couldn't screw into the stringers at the last 4 or 5 inches because they both end at a narrow point.

Everything turned out perfect.


The last of the #10 screws ready to go in. It is best to start in the middle and work outwards.

The caulk will ooze from the seam in the deck. Let it set for 24 hours until hard and sand it smooth.


The #8 1 1/4 inch screws buried themselves in their own adhesive caulk as they drove into the stringers.

I started with 200 stainless steel screws and I ended up using about 120 on the deck.


The new deck is now more square in the hull than the original. You can see were the factory floor was by the black line running below the green, right above the exposed woven fiberglass. This was about 3 inches higher than the other side of the vessel. It didn't take me much effort at all to make it level. No big deal either way because this is under the bow where no one will ever see it.

Glastron was the most well known fiberglass boat maker in the world. Their brand was the best quality around, however, nobody ever guessed these boats would be desirable or even used for more than a decade or so. People at the forums said they built them good but just enough to get the job done.


The triangle is set in place for looks.

I quit for the day because the sun was going down. Another good 8 hour days work!