There are four phases of construction, each with its own shop. The following two pages will give a quick summery of what goes on in each of the shops.

Gelcoat shop:
We build a fiberglass boat from the outside in, starting with a high quality two tone color scheme.

First we clean the mold and then apply several coats of parting wax to it. The parting wax will prevent the "boat part" from sticking to our mold.

The next step is to "mask" & "paint" (gelcoat) the mold with the colors selected.  Areas of the mold to be colored white are sprayed  first and then the accent color is is applied.

The tricky part of this step is that the masking that covered the the accent portion of the mold when the white was being applied, now has to be pulled while the white material is still "wet", and yet "cured" to the point that the masking tape can be pulled and leave a clean line. The accent color must then be sprayed very quickly or we risk having it attack the first coat. Remember we are spraying onto a waxed surface, the material is floating. Both colors must gel together, or the material will wrinkle up and ruin the job.

This is a very time consuming and risky process. Most builders build a solid color boat, and then use accent tape or other methods of applying accent after the boats production.

Lay-up Shop:
Once Gelcoated the Fiberglas laments (matt & roving) are put in layer upon layer until the desired thickness is achieved.

The hand lay-up method is used throughout, including the cabin & cabin top. This method is rather slow but yields a "boat part" that is ridged yet flexible. All materials are pre-cut to plan to insure that every C-Dory is built to a consistent standard.

The next step is bonding the balsa core (1 1/2") into place in the bottom of the hull and then covering it with several more ply's of fiberglass. The bottom ends up about 2" thick.

The cabin & deck construction is similar to that of the hull. Like the hulls bottom, the cabin & deck are built with composite core construction. All top-side decks including the bow area and the top of the trunk cabin are cored with 1/2" balsa. The cabins aft bulkhead is also cored, to the same schedule as the deck.

The hull and it's cabin and deck components are laid up separately and then their molds are assembled together. The parts are then fiberglassed together while still in the molds to insure perfect alignment and to eliminate any possibility of  twist. This process is time consuming, but yields a far superior hull to deck joint than any mechanical system.

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