I live in Raleigh NC but not at home right now. I would like to find out more about you being able to make a mold for the car 2009 Accord sedan. I emailed you earlier this week. bladefxr

 

Yes I got your email I am sorry I have been working a lot and am dead tired. I can make a mold for your car in a few hours if the car is here. I dont have anything that fits your car except a box I just begun making that is universal and holds a pair of 12 inch subs.

 

Finally finished my mold and here is a picture of the universal box I mentioned a while back. It holds 2 twelve inch subs. It also has a center divider making each side a seperate box,all wood is 3/4 mdf. Its not painted its polished black gelcoat! Much tougher than paint. I also gelcoated the bottom and brushed resin on all wooden areas making it weather proof and great for use on botas or outside. The terminals are gold plated and on the bottom. Wood rings are glassed in to screw the woofers into. The nice thing is the mdf absorbs resin making it very tough stuff. The polyfill helps it sound nice and dead. About 1.3 cubic feet per side. Also heres the original !998 - 2002 accord stealth box also.

 

I also sell wholesale fiberglass mat,milled fibers and heavy roving if anyone needs fiberglass materials. My direct email is Azenis29@aol.com.

 

Heres a couple better pics. I also recently acquired 2, 1/4 molds for making RC boats and will be selling bare hulls with decks wholesale. One is a hydroplane the other a deep V. I am also getting some metal flake gelcoat in silver/black,red/black and blue/black and can offer the hulls in a true bass boat finish. I could do speakers in a wild metal flake gelcoat also but it would use a bit of material and cost more.

 

Do you have any specs on the hydro or mono? Who did you get them from? A good legit mold is really hard to come across, if it's a splashed hull you may have a hard time selling it. Hopefully it just some guys design that you can improve on. If you give me the name of the guy you got them from I can get some info on him and his practices. Check out Jim's R/C Boat Dock, it is THE 1/4 scale gas RC forum. Really the only way your going to sell enough of these if they are competitive race hulls, there isn't really a market for sport hulls. People who want a sport boat tend to want it RTR. But with enough trial and error, you can build a competitive hull. Also your marketing is based solely around word of mouth, so the hulls have to perform well with no bad habits to get recognized. It's really hard to start out and get recognized, especially right now. At the speeds we are running now it is not as easy to make a hull that performs, and there are some awesome boats out there right now.

I can tell you this though, there is a serious demand for American copies of the boats made over in Europe and Australia. People pay big bucks to get a PPB, MHZ, Sonic Racing, or viper hull shipped to the states. Recently this new guy got permission from sonic racing to produce some of their large cats (70"-110") here in the states. And he has had great business for just starting out, at first people were very weary of him. But it did not take long for him to gain momentum. I actually saw one of his 72" mystic cat with twin turbine engines at this months club race, it was so badass. There was this other guy that made a deal with PPB to make their dragcat over here in the states, well something happened, he only delivered a handful of the hulls he took orders for and ran off with peoples money. So maybe you could work out a deal with PPB and produce a US market drag cat. The drag cat is getting a lot of attention right now. Not many cats handle as well as it does and still run in the mid 70's to low 80's. This guy I know just spent over $10k to get get 4 PPB drag cats shipped here from Europe.

Sorry if I'm rambling I can talk about RC boats all day. There are quite a few guys who have their own molds and sell hulls locally. They don't make much profit, it's more of a hobby for them. But if your were to strike a deal with one of these overseas manufacturers, it could be your sole source of income. Well I'll leave you with a shot of my two monos so you can see the difference between a deep V and a race mono. I can get a shot of ride surface if you want. The sharp V goes right back to the transom, and the last 8" or so of the keel is flat about 2" wide at the widest point. At speed this is the only surface that is touching the water, trimmed right you will only have the prop in the water.

 

Not a word about the new shiny black box? I busted my butt making that mold! The hydroplane mold is the original mold and I would also be getting the matching plug with it. When you get the plug you know your buying it from the maker. Also Im buying this from a company in S.C. that made full size boat parts and went out of business recently. The hydro is a pickle fork design and 3 pieces total. Bottom hull,deck and a canopy. The deep V I havnt seen yet. The man I am buying from is very honest and was going to retire soon but going out of business forced him into it sooner. Money was not a problem for him,I will check but I really doubt he splashed anything. I think I can make these very reasonably priced and they would be great starter boats for someone on a budget. I know the deep V is fairly simple and I could probally sell a complete hull thats finished in nice shiny gelcoat but unassembled for 125.00. The hydro probally around 150.00. It will most likely be a week or so before I drive down to S.C. and buy the molds and plugs so I wont have pictures for a while. That new box sounds great a customer stopped by with a pair of kicker CVX's in his and it looked hot and sounded great. The polyfill really helps the glass boxes to sound completely dead like MDF. If anyone wants one of those boxes I can make them a great deal. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...#ht_500wt_1182

 

Well if you can sell them for that price, I think you will be able to move them. Most hulls sell for $200+ while most race hulls are a little over $300. Pickle fork and thunderboats are going to be your best bet, pickle forks perform well at speed and the thunderboats are used in the stock motor class. Not too many people making glass thunderboats either, so if you can get one I think it would be a good investment. I know you love mat, but your going to have to use some cloth, a few builders have used mat solely and the hulls just don't take the abuse or handle predictably. And they were built properly, in this market no one half asses their layup job. Now some do halfass joining the hull and the the deck, as it can be pretty hard to get into the bow. If the deep V has a shoe box fit you will be fine, but the hydro is going to be tricky getting in the sponsons. These boats take a lot of abuse and the cloth is really necessary to keep them together, I can show you an article from the best builder about mat vs cloth. Now the deck and hatch/cowling and be done in pure mat. But the hull can not flex, if it does the boat will be very unpredictable at speed. Also remember you are going to be working with 3/4 or 1 ounce mat, and very light cloth. And you want it to be absolutely light as possible while maintaining superior strength, especially in the hydro. I know you probably won't listen to me, but performance aside a lot of people won't buy a mat only hull so if you do that, I recommend not mentioning the pure mat build.

If the hulls are well designed and perform well with at least a stock motor I think you will sell quite a few of them at that price. I think you should also go to that forum I linked you to, and start a build thread on the hulls, so you can show people you know what your doing, and are going to be offering good hulls at a cheap price. There is a market for the budget builder, a lot of younger kids are starting to get interested in the hobby.

Also if you were to rigg them, or make them easier to assemble in a kit form like WHH's kits I think you would sell even more. A lot of people love WHH's kit boats because the hull comes pre-drilled, and the stringers come pre-drilled for the motor. Drilling them out can be nerve wrecking for a new boater, as it has to be precise and perfect first time out. TopSecret sells great hardware at a great price, so I would use them. Make up a template for the TS hardware, and offer your hulls pre-drilled with a TS hardware package. Or you can just sell them pre-drilled, and tell the person to get their own TS hardware. Everyone from sport boaters to racers use TS hardware, and you can get it dirt cheap off ebay. To really sell hulls in this market you have to find a way to stand out, and I think this is the perfect way to get a beginner much more interested in your hulls. Once you have the template made up, it will be very easy to drill out and I think add a lot of value to your hulls.

Oh and I highly highly recommend that you install the stringers yourself. First it is much better to do while the hull is still in the mold, and most people are very intimidated by glassing in the stringers or just don't want to deal with it. Very very few boats don't come with stringers installed these days. With gas boats it's the industry standard to have the stingers exactly 5" apart, and you MUST use cloth to glass them in. I can pull up a nice tutorial on with some tips and tricks to make installing the stringers easier.

Ok, Ok sorry for going off again lol. I love the box, and I wish I had the money to have you make me a sexy single box. If I would have known about your boxes a year ago I would have had you build me a box for my boat, but the MDF box I built is holding up well, like you said it just soaks up resin.

 

Thanks for the info. I already found a local supplier for the tissue cloth,its very light weight. I plan on a single layer of mat and then tissue over that. I cant use all tissue or it will imprint into the gelcoat. Glad you like the box,so far eveyone seems too and I sold one today. I can also gelcoat the hulls in different colors,I can even do a bass boat metalflake in red,blue or silver. I do need info on the stringers,I plan on selling the hulls with the stringers done. I am not planning on joining the two halves or drilling anything. For that price I can't spend a lot of time on those things. I can make a excellent stiff hull in pretty colors and even sand the two halves so they fit together properly. I think thats fair for the price.

 

You may have to join to see this article, but seems to cover the stringers installation pretty well. CLICK HERE. You will find better info scattered about Jim's Boat Dock forums, but that should suffice. Well I think your going to have a tough time selling sport hulls that aren't joined. While there is still a very small market of guys who know what they are doing, and looking for a cheap play boat. The couple of joined hulls I've seen sell online did not sell right away, if at all. I think you will be better off charging a bit more and joining them. Low $200's is still a good price for a well built hull. As with any business, I would recommend doing a little research on the market so you can get familiar with what sells and what doesn't and at what price. Luckily even the economy isn't affecting this market to much, for a lot of these guys this is their heroin or escape and even with money problems they're still dishing out money for boats.