Copycat

C

ChadW

Member
I'm a copycat. The moment I saw Mr. Patterson's glass dodger, I knew I had to have one. I trailer anywhere from an hour to four hours to get to the hunting waters. One thing I hated was raising, lowering and strapping the canvas dodger every time I left the house. The glass dodger solves this issue.

I went about construction a bit differently than Eric, in that I made a pattern from a sheet of FRP. The FRP is flimsy, and it took two of us to position and attach the pattern to the boat. Taping the pattern in place did stiffen it up a lot and laying the glass over it was not too difficult. Using foam and epoxy would have been better, but I was trying to do on the "cheap" not have to use epoxy resin.

Having never worked with polyester before, I had issues working fast enough and ended up with some dry spots and pockets scattered throughout. It is not terrible for a first attempt but some slower setting epoxy would have worked out better.

I laid up a quarter inch thick flange around the entire perimeter and will attach it to the hull with revnuts/nutserts. I'll use knobbed bolts for easy/quick removal.

I still have some clean up/touch up to do before paint and grass rails, but the major construction is complete.

Thanks for the inspiration sir!
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NIIIIICCCCEEEEE!

Did the FRP remain in place or did you pop the glass off it after the resin cured? That turned out really nice. Do you plan on running standing up with a tiller extension. I prefer that to sitting down.

Thanks for showing everyone what you came up with. I think you can be proud of your resourcefulness and tenacity to make it happen after just seeing a few pictures several states away. That took some faith.
 
Thanks! I applied a couple coats of paste wax to the FRP before laying the glass down. Once the layup was complete the glass popped right off of the FRP form.

I've never ran these small boats while standing. I'm looking forward to trying it now that I have a solid handhold on the sneakbox. The top of the dodger has a few extra layers of glass so a handle of some type can be mounted. I even thought about adding a handle on the side of the dodger for getting in and out of the boat. So many options opened up!
 
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