Time to build a hard top bimini! It's the biggest single build we've done so far and it's turning out to be a lot more difficult than we expected. Join us for this Part 1 video of our hard top bimini build. Total Boat wanted to help out with this build and sent us some product to use. Total boat is a company which makes products for use on many of your boat projects and if you want to check them out they gave us a one time discount code you can use at totatboat.com! The code is: jradventures

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this video next week when we get to see how well all our prep work did or didn't go!

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Closed Captions(CC) :
[Music]

[Music]

but no matter what the country

[Music]

a hard bimini

is something that if you don't have it

you kind of envy it but at the same time

it is a very very difficult or expensive

thing to acquire or build either way we

have been planning for a long time to

eventually do a hard bimini

and just kind of the way things played

out we decided to do it now

and yeah this is definitely the single

hardest project we've ever done on the

boat so our boat came with this canvas

bimini soft top it had the metal

structure which was pretty good the helm

station has a little zip out thing so

you could peek up through and see the

sails while you're underway but its

waterproofness was lacking and the

zippers were really starting to degrade

over time we could hardly open it

anymore also for whatever reason our

particular soft top got a lot of mold on

it we also have these solar panels

flexible solar panels on the top that we

had kind of just used big washers and

they would tear out we lost two of them

in storms those afternoon storms that

come through in charleston where you get

like 50 knot gusts we lost two solar

panels over a couple different months so

that was getting expensive so now is the

time to do the hard bimini so first

things first we're cutting off the

little track light we had around the

cockpit and then we just cut off the

soft top which seems a little bit crazy

but has to be done

[Music]

so once we've cut off the top and pull

it off it really looks like a different

boat here it's kind of surprising how

weird it is not to have a covered

cockpit

this makes us super eager to uh get the

build going i will say that we were

super naive about how much work this was

gonna take so the first things first the

plan is to build a wooden mold and we're

gonna seal that so that we can actually

lay glass up on top of it we need to

figure this out a little bit there's

definitely some experimentation that's

going to have to happen but we're pretty

sure that this is a viable means of

doing this

because we don't want to do it in

separate pieces off the boat we want to

do it all on the boat that would be the

other options to to make a mold take the

mold to land and build pieces and bolt

them back together we consider that but

ultimately we want to have one big solid

hardtop yesterday yesterday we got a

fair bit done but today the weather has

turned windier than it was supposed to

be

so we're not going to be able to

continue with as good of progress but

here's what we got i got a plastic tarp

down on the entire thing to keep it from

getting wet until we actually do the

glass layup

and we

underneath started putting in these

blah

uh or pulled the mold down and keep it a

good form with the metal piping below i

still gotta put these

seams uh marry these seems a little bit

better

and

then basically the mold will be prepared

i had an idea that maybe this plastic

could be used as a mold release agent if

i could get the plastic basically spray

adhesed to the

wood so i'm gonna run an experiment this

is where the experimentation started we

weren't entirely sure

the best way to make

wood into a female mold for our project

and

we decided to try laying down some

plastic with some spray adhesive and

seeing if we could lay up on top of

plastic with the gel coat

kind of suspected this might not work

but it's worth a try before we do the

project

as a whole

this is round two it's a different

experiment i've sealed the wood with a

layer to a polyurethane and then i

painted a couple layers of polyvinyl

alcohol on

and i know this won't react negatively

with the gel coat but i'm just not sure

how easily it'll pull off

of the wood i tried the three different

experiments and the results of the three

they were all informative the first one

is here

this is the one where i use the plastic

underneath and the plastic crinkled up

and it's really nasty

i put i think one layer of 1708 on so i

mean

for gel coat and one layer 1708 it's a

good little uh

it's sturdy but it's really terribly

wrinkly and not useful so the second

experiment was to

use that wood

just kind of as is i didn't they didn't

sand it or anything i just put a layer

of polygon alcohol on it and um

yeah this one worked okay it actually

released fairly easily but um it's hard

to see

it's a little bit grainy and there's a

bunch of little gaps in there so

that one was not bad you know starting

to be something we could work with

and then finally the last one

i sanded the wood

put polyurethane in it sanded it again

and then put a with a fine grit and put

the

polyvinyl alcohol on top of that so now

the wood itself was pretty smooth and

shiny and

you can see some glass popping through

there um there we go it's has almost

inherent shine in it so it's definitely

something we can work with so this is

the strategy we decided to go

put the wood up polyurethane it sand it

apply your thing again sand it again

with and then put the polyvinyl alcohol

on it and this

is where we're going we're probably not

going to get the shiniest of texture

with it but

we will get something with you know kind

of a matte texture but it's very smooth

so this is the ticket the

experimentation works and it's also

encouraging that you know with just one

layer of gel coat and one layer of glass

it's uh

it's nice definitely better than the

canvas

for the hatch we're going to build a

custom hatch cover for it but i do need

to make the cutout now as opposed to

doing it later

so that we can work properly when we do

the fiddles but we'll talk about that

later so here's the hatch it's a decent

size easy to stick your head through

a lot of prep work and this female

wooden mold is kind of brittle so i have

to make sure to walk only where

the underlying metal supports are here

i'm just spraying some cheap black spray

paint from the hardware store just as a

sanding guide

um i know i'm not gonna get this perfect

but i want to get the big lumps out uh

and you know it's like any other boat

project ever there's way more sanding

than you would choose

[Music]

another task we have to do before

putting the fiberglass on is put these

sort of temporary mini fiddles on the

edge that will just kind of hold the

resin and glass from dripping all over

the place all over the sides i want to

kind of make a small cup a small lip

that's going to help contain the glass

from just running over the edges and

making a ton of sharp spikes so here we

have our a few days of working on the

wooden mold i think it looks pretty good

you can see how shiny it is hopefully

that will make it so this doesn't stick

to the fiberglass project because that's

going to be a huge pain

and even though it looks pretty uneven

it's to the touch

smooth

so we have about 25 gallons of polyester

resin and about

three gallons of gel coat

we have about 500 square feet of glass

half of that is three quarter ounce and

matte and the other half of that is

1708 and then we have my coring material

which looks a little thin but i think

it's gonna do the job which is a core

mat it's a matte uh basically a fabric

coring material because

it was cheaper thinner and more easily

accessible the um

solid

poly composite honeycomb cores that you

see they're significantly more expensive

and shipping them they have to be

shipped as like 4x8 sheets which was

also significantly more expensive so

uh yeah we didn't go that route if we

didn't already have the metal frame

which we do and i'm working with then i

would probably have bitten the bullet

and gone with the honeycomb coring but

we already have a metal framework so we

already have some rigidity built in

so i think the core mat will be good

enough our laminating schedule here is

going to be gel coat

a thin layer of top strand a layer 1708

the core mat material 1708 top strand

and gel coat so it's kind of like a

sandwich it's going to be fairly thin

all things considered probably quarter

inch-ish

of a layup but we're not trying to go

for too too heavy here um just the job

it needs to do is let us walk on it

while we're working on the sail hold the

solar panels strongly

and not let the water in and maybe catch

water too uh so but that's that's all it

needs to do it doesn't need to be a half

inch thick of fiberglass to do that job

laying out the polyvan alcohol we

actually brought a compressor because we

thought maybe we could try spraying it

but the thing about where we are in

charleston is that there are

microclimates that exist because of the

water the micro climate was completely

different from the from the forecast of

the area and we just didn't have time it

was either raining or the forecast that

it would be light wind but the

microclimate was making strong winds so

spraying the pva became we tried it it

just didn't work at all we had to roll

it out mixing up the gel coat working in

big batches like this is a little

nerve-wracking because the gel coat's

like 100 a gallon or more and when

you're pouring a quarter of a gallon you

realize that's you know 25 bucks that if

you screw it up it's just down the drain

and if we've never worked with gel coat

in these or resin in these quantities

before so it's definitely

was a learning curve

[Music]

looking back at the footage it seems

crazy that we even tried this given how

strong the wind was blowing but really

again

we couldn't wait around forever we had

to get it done so

yeah here we go

[Music]

[Music]

so

yesterday's projects

i wouldn't call them a disaster

but

is a catastrophe less than a disaster it

was pretty bad

it was it was a mess

so this everything conspired against us

we never

worked on that scale of um you know

square footage before of working with

fiberglass and the wind and the sun and

rookie mistakes and

all that stuff so

today the uh it's the next morning the

glass is mostly cured it's a teeny bit

tacky it's like not super hard so it's

still laminatable which is what it's

meant to do so i stained it off some of

the most egregious bubbles and voids

that we had

and today we're going to get back at it

we're going to do smaller

square footage areas the wind continues

to be a problem

it's nice that we have no rain

but we've had

every day we got 20 knots of wind at

least outside

and it's not

it's not in the forecast for that but uh

it's making everything very difficult

with regard to this laminating process

we're on the day three now day two

oh working outdoors is definitely

been more of an adventure

than we bargained for but we got to get

the project done we can't wait for

perfect weather otherwise it's never

going to get done

so you can see here we're working with

the core material it's called core mat

that we decided to use for this project

and

yeah even this thing was blowing around

like crazy as we were working on it's a

pretty decent product i wish we had

gotten the thicker one i swore i ordered

four millimeters and i got two

millimeters

i

might have just been tired but

i think four millimeters would have

worked better two millimeters worked

pretty decent for what it was you know

working with it is is pretty nice so we

started to get more comfortable with our

pores you can see here we're going with

a full gallon pour of resin which i

would have never thought i would be

doing so let's talk about materials that

we use for this project real quick we

are already planning to do this hard

bimini build and total boat reached out

to us and asked if we were doing

anything that they could send us some

product for and help out with and yeah

we said yes because i've been using

total book products on a number of my

other projects for a while now and i've

been pretty pleased with most everything

you know gave them a small shopping list

and they sent it to us

the only thing is we for this size

project

we really needed a lot of resin i think

we used 35 gallons of resin

resin is a hazardous material to ship in

the united states so it has all these

extra fees for shipping and i was able

there was a local place in charleston i

was able to get

uh 25 gallons of resin from

and i didn't have to pay anything for

shipping because it was local so most

resident we're using here i got from the

local place in charleston but all the

gel coat and the blue resin you see

that's from total vote for this project

we decided to go with polyester resin

instead of usually i go with epoxy for

indoor projects one because epoxy is

stronger but two epoxy doesn't smell

nearly as strong as the polyester resin

does but polyester resin isn't weak it's

a very strong material that's what the

boat's built out of and

it's

a lot cheaper than epoxy and i can

afford buying it in five gallon drums so

since this is gonna be an outside

project through and through we're using

gel coat anyways we've just figured

let's just do it with the polyester

resin another benefit is that the

polyester resin wets out the glass

better than the epoxy resin does and i

we're using 1708 which is a pretty thick

matte of fiberglass

and i'm using that i've used 1708 a lot

with epoxy and it just it does take a

lot more wetting out whereas the the

polyester resin just

blends right into it beautifully so

that's this project and it's it's a

learning

experience for us because we've never

done anything of the scale with this

material

[Music]

now working with the core mat is was

kind of interesting it wets out it sucks

up a lot of resin um they all do it

doesn't suck up as much as you might

think it does

uh and we're starting to get our

technique down here we're pre-wetting

with the resin then we put the material

down then we wet one side flip it over

wet the other side and it gives you a

pretty good working time it kind of

feels like a wet towel afterwards and

like weight and consistency but it's

pretty easy to move around and work with

[Music]

this is the end of day three

got one layer

uh got the entire

layer of the core mat down

and one layer of 1708

end of day four we got

1708 over the entire top

of the bimini now

all right

we're down to the final layer of

fiberglass i'm so excited not to have to

do the big glass layups anymore there's

still lots to do

but if we can get this final layer and

then maybe maybe some gel coat on top of

it

i'm thinking i'm gonna put the glass and

the gel coat and then i'm going to fare

on top of the gel coat basically sand it

down i've got lots of the

waxed gel coat left to use basically get

a white surface that'll be easier

visually to fare out and i'm not even

going for perfect just something that

doesn't look terrible so you can see

here i finally started to get the groove

of how to do this smoothly the wind is

also not crazy strong today which is

very nice and i'm able to i laid all the

three-quarter ounce mat out ahead of

time and just kind of went in one big go

and put the uh

resin in it

okay here's where we're at i spent a

number of hours today

sanding yesterday's gel coat

as you can see

the it's set really really nice and hard

which is part of the reason i did the

gel coat because it uh let the glass

underneath get real hard

and you can see kind of the

seams the overlap on the different

layers of glass that i've sanded out

yeah i'm pretty happy with it and i'm

not going for perfect we might end up

seeing some of these seams

in the finished product but there's

going to be solar panels all up here

anyways you're not going to see

so

all right gel coat one more round see

what we get

starting to look good now you can still

see some of the ridges and creases in

there but it's starting to look kind of

like a legitimate bimini

i haven't shown in the past little bit

because it's just been white on white

it's basically been sanding gel coat on

top of gel coat trying to fare it out i

think one

lesson i learned was

i i used the most recent coat i did was

with thickened gel coat and i spread

that out to fill all the spider web

cracks

of the last layer of matte it worked

really well so i should have done that

sooner uh but

i'm ready for the last layer of gel coat

i'm going to mix it up a little bit

thicker with some colloidal silica and

i'm going to roll it on with a four inch

roller with half inch nap

to try to create a bit of texture i'm

hoping this turns out okay because i

don't this is going to be walked on i

don't want it smooth this is as fair as

i care to get it for the top

it's going to be under solar panels

mostly anyways

uh i did draw a line around it

uh where i started to install the fiddle

so there's no point in putting a

finishing layer of gel coat gel coat

where i'm going to be standing and

putting fiddles anyways so here we go

i know it's this is a line

everything on this side of the line i'm

not going to mess with right now because

i still need to put a fiddle and uh

glass it in

but

that's the degree of fairness you can

see that there's it's not like a bow

hole

but

it's not that bad

and it's really hard so

one last layer of gel coat to cover up

the thin spots that poke through

uh and

we're gonna move on because i really

want to get the uh

mold

the wood

that provided the framework for all this

i want to get that out

but i uh can't do that until i can bolt

this thing down

i can't bolt this thing down

until i get that last layer gel coat

so

let's do it

um so here i'm painting on a little bit

of thickened gel coat with some non-skid

sand mixed into it

and just rolling it on with a rough

finish took a little bit to figure this

out but it worked pretty well all things

considered i was happy with it

[Music]

our top coat is looking very very good

i'm pretty pleased with it

it's difficult to tell because it's all

white on white

maybe you can see a little bit of a

difference here

and the uh this is the part i didn't do

where the fiddles are gonna be glassed

on and this is the

non-skid

i might wait till the sun's going down a

little bit to get you better shadows but

i like it

looks good looks better than i thought

it was gonna look to be honest all right

so this is where we're gonna call this

video done we've got all of the big flat

layup of glass done

but we still have to do the fiddles and

build the hatch so i i would consider us

probably only halfway done at this point

and it's already taken more than a week

to get a week solid of every day working

all day long to get this far

so

yeah it's starting to look good though

it's it's definitely becoming a

legitimate hard pivoting so stay tuned

for the next video where we do all the

finish work get it bolted on get the

fiddles done work on the the custom

hatch for it yeah there's a lot and put

the solar panels back on so thanks for

watching this

see in the next video

uh

ugh