Kindly Old Dr. K’s Hydrosphere

A New Old Classic - Part 6: A Custom Cockpit

11 10 2008

If you’re building a stock boat, the mold usually comes with a mold for an integral seat and cockpit. For this modern update of the Augsburg, I decided to modify the cockpit to a larger cockpit and make a custom seat. While I’m sure this will be worthwhile it adds a fair amount of work to the project.

One of the old methods for making a cockpit rim without a mold is to just contact cement a length of 3/4″ plastic hose around the hole in the deck and lay glass over it to make a cockpit rim. I tried a couple trial versions of this and I wasn’t happy with the way I envisioned it turning out. I decided to make the cockpit rim similar to my modern playboat/river runer. I know this cockpit shape fits me well and if I get it close enough to the playboat shape and size I can use my existing skirts with the new boat. I decided to make a cockpit rim mold off my modern boat and modify it to fit the Augsburg.

Here are some pictures of the process so far.

This is the seat/cockpit mold that came with the mold. The rim is too small for the modified Augsburg and the factory original seats were always too small for me anyway.

The popular modern river/play boat cockpit is prepped to serve as a plug for the new cockpit rim mold. The white stuff is clay used to fill niches in the cockpit rim. Epoxy doesn’t bond to polyethylene, so you don’t even have to wax and mold release it.

You can’t see them, but the wax paper is covered with cut strips of fiberglass impregnated with resin. We’ll lay layer after layer of these on the plug to create the mold.

Building up the layers of glass strips on the plug. The tape and kraft paper protect the plug boat from drips.

The cockpit mold is cured and popped off the plug boat. I made this mold fairly light, as I will need to bend it a little to make the final cockpit rim conform to the shape of the Augsburg deck.