Boat Building Forum

Find advice on all aspects of building your own kayak, canoe or any lightweight boats

Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
By:Peter Madsen
Date: 7/25/2015, 5:28 pm

Hi all,
I am new here.
I came across this forum as I had the idea to build a kayak from Polycarbonate because it would be really cool to be able to see through the bottom.
After looking around, it looks like using a Ganymede design (http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/guillemot/blog/nick/ganymede_offsets_free_plans_build_ganymede_kayak) is promising because
1) it is a simple design and it should be possible to shape the polycarbonate and
2) it actually has a flat bottom which means little distortion of the view.
Not having overly much experience with kayak building or polycarbonate shaping, my initial idea is to reinforce all joints where two main pieces meet with glassfiber, so the final design will have a sort of 'frame' of glassfiber reinforcement on the edges (which I will paint over decoratively) but transparent faces.
Currently I am in the planning phase, trying to determine whether there are some fundamental flaws in the design/idea, so I am looking into details with regard to PC shaping, glueing and kayak design in general.
If anyone here have any thoughts/experiences/warnings on this that they would like to share, it would most probably be very helpful!

Thanks,

Peter Madsen

Messages In This Thread

Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Peter Madsen -- 7/25/2015, 5:28 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Etienne Muller -- 7/25/2015, 5:37 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Peter Madsen -- 7/25/2015, 6:04 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Etienne Muller -- 7/26/2015, 5:08 am
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Justin -- 7/25/2015, 6:04 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Bob Ten Eyck -- 7/25/2015, 6:31 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Robert W -- 7/25/2015, 7:05 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Bill Hamm -- 7/26/2015, 12:29 am
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Marc Upchurch -- 7/26/2015, 9:36 am
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Bill Hamm -- 7/27/2015, 12:22 am
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
anewhouse -- 7/27/2015, 11:48 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Thomas Duncan -- 7/28/2015, 9:24 am
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Marc Upchurch -- 7/28/2015, 8:55 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Peter Madsen -- 8/8/2015, 2:07 pm
Re: Material: Transparent Polycarbonate kayak
Mike Bielski -- 8/10/2015, 10:29 am