Carbon fiber drift boat?

[joemomma]

Does anybody make a Carbon fiber DB, I heard rumor. Being involved with Motocross and some carbon fiber stuff, I would think they would be very expensive!

Joe

[ondarvr]

I don't think you afford to buy one, carbon fiber is hard to get and very pricey with all of the military contracts for armor plating.

Carbon Fiber is very strong, but not durable, just compare a fiberglass downrigger rod to a high end graphite one, you can really beat up the glass rod and it survives, it can be very easy to destroy a graphite one though.

Many boats are marketed with kevlar or carbon fiber construction, but for the most part it's just a strip here or there that adds almost nothing but a higher price to the consumer.

[joemomma]

I agree, boy's girl friend, says her dads DB was made out of carbon. Carbon fiber?, Yea I think so. I know that carbon fiber exhaust for four strokes, are $1,000. for mx bikes. A drift boat would be $10000-$20000.

[Uglygreen]

Actually it is already in testing I believe, and it is a carbon fiber laminate over a sealed honeycomb plastic core material covered with Kevlar on the bottom and about 6" up the sides. Dry weight on a 17' X 60' is less than 200 lbs and it appears pretty darn indestructable.

- Brad

[ondarvr]

There have been many boats made from carbon fiber and Kevlar, if used correctly, a combination of carbon, kevlar and glass with epoxy can work. If you watch sailing races on TV, you will see what happens to highly stressed carbon fiber. It performs very well up to the point of failure, then it almost explodes with little or no warning, resulting in a broken mast, or a 2 piece hull, followed by rapid sinking. Kevlar is also very strong, but is not used in boats that much because of the cost and it absorbs water.
You can use "S" glass and get very good results at a much lower cost and better durability (not as sexy as carbon though).

Carbon Fiber is around $30.00 per lb. glass is around $2.00

Depending on how the boat is made, it will be around 50% resin, 50% fiber, so on a 200 lb boat there's 100 lbs of carbon. That means you have around $3,000 in just carbon, not counting waste (some methods will give you 70% fiber, this would increase the cost even more). You would need to use epoxy with the carbon fiber, good epoxy will be from $5.00 to $10.00 per lb, so that's another grand. Honeycomb type products can be very costly also and only work well on flat surfaces.
These products are not as easy to work with when compared to polyester resin and glass, so it will take longer to make and need a much better trained crew($$)to do it.

Most drift boats are over built for how they're used, so they end up over weight. I've made many of them from glass, when I wanted to make a light one, I used very good resin and very good types of glass. Doing this I could use normal methods and make a 17'x54" boat that weighed in at less than 250 lbs and they have lasted 15 years so far.

Depending on how you used a carbon fiber boat, it could be OK, but at a very high cost, it may cost $10,000 or more to save 100 or less lbs.

It would be a very cool boat, and there are fly guys that the ten grand wouldn't mean much to, they would do it just to "one up" their buddies.

[Pelhament]

There are fly guys that the ten grand wouldn't mean much to, they would do it just to "one up" their buddies.

Wow, was that really necessary? As a "fly guy" I couldn't imagine spending the money it would take to buy a carbon fiber boat. I spent $500 on a carbon fiber hood for my car and have kicked myself ever since.

[Rubber Boot]

Id spend 10 grand.........give it to Jody and he will give you everything you neeed!!!!!!!!!