TopShot25
Well-known member
Well I finely decided on how I want to go about this project. I do remember someone here on the board asked specifically for details if I did this project, so I’ll start with the short story and if you want details, well I’ve got those too.
I hope this helps someone come to an informed decision about a future project for their own boat, Good luck
The short story:
I must say that this project, just like most, took way more time then I had planned. Let’s just say I expected it to be a couple of weekend’s maybe. Well how about a couple of months. This was in no way as simple as it sounded when I started. Literally hours of hanging almost upside down, with all your weight coming down where your ribs meet the edge of the fish hold. Yeah it was that much fun and more! It’s also amazing how much it cost from start to finish, but you know how BOAT stuff is. Basically this was an incredible pain in my, well you know. Now that it’s all said and done, I am very glad I did it, but I’m ECSTATIC that it’s finished. I really can’t tell you what makes me more ecstatic, being done, or having this fish hold in my boat. That being said it really did take me about two months and about 600 bucks. But now I have a very good 280 quart insulated fish hold/ice chest in my Parker. I turned the hatch so it opens forward and sealed the darn thing up so that it keeps the water off the deck out and the cold in, which by the way is easier than I expected. I would recommend that to anyone with this fish hold in their boat. I also put a divider in about the center to let me use part as an ice chest when I want to. Here is the before and after pic’s, and now will move on to the long and drawn out details.
First order of business was to have most of this worked out in my head before I started. Here is some of my thinking on what I wanted to accomplish with this project.
In order to make this more functional I wanted to divide the locker in half. Most of my trips I don’t need that large of a fish hold and it just made sense to me to be able to use some of it for an ice chest. After all, if it’s an ice chest, I may as well utilize it the best I can. Also if I can, I want each half to be basically water tight. I would like the option to fill it with an ice slurry someday. So I’m trying to design this as such. I guess we will have to wait and see if I can manage it, or probably how close I can come to it. The hatch is my biggest problem and I’m going to tackle that last, so we’ll have to wait and see how it comes out. I do have an idea on how I want it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Also very important to me was the divider had to be somewhat removable. I didn’t want to ruin the best part about this fish hold, it’s huge. I needed to be able to remove it if we were expecting larger fish. I also need it to be waterproof. I need to keep the fish stuff on one side and the ice chest stuff on the other. I don’t need a bunch of fish blood in the ice chest. Although that would probably keep the wife off the boat in the future
Last, I need to be able to drain or pump out each side individually. That ended up being more trouble then I first thought. In the end I found a simple way to do it, but it did take me a while, and with quite a few ideas having to be thrown aside until I finally found one that I was happy with. I am permanently installing two stainless ¾”drain pipes through, and into the bilge area of the boat. These two pipes will each have a ball valve before connecting together at the macerator pump. This way I can pump either side of the fish hold without it bleeding over into the other side. It also keeps it very simple inside the fish hold. I may be able to get away without needing a screen of some kind and just having a pickup about ¼” off the bottom.
So here we go. The First problem I had to face and where I actually started this project was one of the three rigging tubes running from the gas tank compartment to the bilge had been cut out. It had been cut off so it only stuck out about 2 inches into the fish hold from each side. Maybe from the factory so nobody accidentally cuts into the tubes with the gas lines, I don’t know, but I sure wish they would have cut it cleanly. It looked more like someone cut it with a hammer then a saw. I couldn’t use couplings anyway so it didn’t really matter, but with my 1½” bait tank drain line in there it was way too hard to get to, so I wasn’t able to square it up very well. I did know that if I was going to make this fish hold sealed, I would need to close up this pipe. Not the end of the world, but a pain in the neck for sure. I needed to put about 21 inches of 2” PVC pipe into this open section and I couldn’t get the drain line completely out without removing my bait tank. I just did that job a few months back and I’m not doing that again for awhile, so I needed another option. I ended up cutting a piece of pipe to fit and then slicing it in half for about 6”. I pulled the drain line up into the fish hold, slid the pipe onto the drain line and then pulled it back through. The open section let me get the pipe in place. I just used PVC glue to put the small piece back in place. Then carefully so I would not get any resin in the pipe, I hope, I wrapped the joint with fiberglass cloth that I had presoaked with resin.
In these pictures you can see the fiberglass cloth. The first picture you can see the 6” piece I sliced out so I could get the hose pulled up to allow the pipe to pop up into place.
Now I could focus on the actual project. I had to make a decision of where to put the divider. Since the fish hold is fairly large I was thinking of making one side smaller than the other. I felt that if I make both sides different sizes it would give me more options. The hard part is that I have to guess how much usable space I will have when the project is completed. I decided to make a pattern for the divider. It will help me decide where to place it and I felt that in order to get a good fit the best way was to make a pattern. So I took my time and made the pattern fit well. My thinking was that I needed it to fit very well if I wanted it to be strong. Now after fitting the pattern divider it gave me a great look and feel for how the final outcome would be. After making the pattern I traced it onto ½” marine plywood and cut it out. Once sanded, it fit nicely. Now that the divider was made I could use the pattern as a test piece. So I cut out the center of the pattern to find out how big I wanted the removable part to be. I got lucky and liked the way it looked on the first try. Now with the pattern realistic I could make the final decision where to place the divider. Moving the divider to one side makes the opening at the top smaller, so I had to be careful not to go too far either way. I also learned later, it’s amazing how much smaller it is when you put two inches of insulation all around the inside. That actually worked out to be about a full 4’x8’ sheet of 2” foam. Anyway after many ponder beers ( I love that, got it from someone here at Classic Parker) and my buddies input, I ended up with the divider only about 2” off of center. Once I decided on that it was easy to cut the divider. After sanding I marked and drilled holes to attach the removable divider. Installed stainless Tee nuts on one side and then covered each side with a sheet of fiberglass cloth. Once sanded, and after making sure the plumbing would work, I glassed it in place and now it’s on to the plumbing.
I had already decided to use a macerator pump and actually picked one up a couple of years ago on sale just for this project. So now it’s time to install the two stainless pipes for the drain. I had already made sure the plumbing would work and had drilled the holes earlier. They turned out to be 3” from each side of the divider and 5” off the bottom. This will keep it in the small protected area next to the divider. Not that anything will really damage the drain pipe but it will also keep any fish from bumping into it when the center is open. Finding the spot for the pipes in the bilge turned out to be pretty easy. Of course it involved another ponder beer. Although my bilge is getting pretty busy, the place I needed the pipes to enter was not a problem at all. The pump, well that’s another thing altogether, and I might even need a couple more ponder beers for that one. The pipes are just off the bottom and just to the starboard side of center. There’s a ridge along the bottom, kind of looks like molding, and as it turned out right above that was perfect. After a bunch of measurements and that ponder beer, it all laid out on paper well. It will have a slightly downward angle into the fish hold. That’s part of the reason why I moved it up to 5” off the bottom in the fish hold. If the angle was too great I might have a hard time with fittings. By the way there is nothing in the section aft of the fish hold on my Parker.
The foam insulation is a long story but the jest of it is, after looking all over for polyurethane foam and for whatever reason having a hard time finding it out here on the west coast, I asked my neighbor about it. He has a roofing business and uses it all the time. He gave me a 4’x8’x2” sheet he had left over from a previous job. It just doesn’t get any better than that. I really hadn’t decided what thickness I wanted, but that kind of settled it. The foam is very easy to work with but I will give a word of caution. That word is RESPIRATOR. I had no idea and was told by a guy at the shop where I got my fiberglass supplies. It’s just like fiberglass, the dust is very fine, and it gets into everything and itches the same way. Cutting the foam to fit was no real problem, you can use a knife or cut it with a saw. I just took my time and fit it better then I really had to, that perfectionist thing again. Sometimes I hate it, but that’s just the way I am so I forgive myself. The wife gets a little tired of it, but she just stays out of the way. I think she’d like it a lot more if I was working on the house instead of the boat I did find that it’s much easier to cut the foam into sections and glue them in instead of big pieces. I tried both and found that when I worked on front and back side of each half, it was much easier to put it in, in two pieces. I could get a much better fit and it was faster, easier and a way better use of the foam. It didn’t leave me with a bunch of weird shaped pieces of foam left over. I also asked the fiberglass guy what I should use to glue it in place and he said I could use 5200 or I could just use resin. So resin it is, here we go.
These pictures show how I clamped the foam in place for the resin to set-up.
The bottom was definitely a challenge. I wanted a way to keep the drain plug, have access to it if I ever needed to reseal or replace it or anything, and have insulation also. Man nothing is ever easy if you want to do it right. This was really a pain but I think I got it right. I made an upper and lower part of this so I could also have an insulation plug to make it awesome. There’s probably a better and/or easier way, but here’s what I came up with.
I glued some plywood together and cut it basically round. I turned it on the lathe to get it to the 4” size I wanted. I glued another piece of plywood to it to form the lip I needed at the top. I put a couple of coats of resin on it to seal it up and smooth it out. After sanding, it came out pretty nice. Then I spread some plumbers putty in the corner to round it out. Next, and don’t tell my wife, I dipped it in this hot wax thing-a ma-bob she has in the bathroom. It’s some hot paraffin wax bath thing she says makes her hands feel better. I don’t know, but it sure puts a pretty even coat of wax on anything you dip in there. May not be by the book, but it got the job done. After a few layers of fiberglass I got a pretty nice bowl for the upper part of the drain. I cut away some of the foam to countersink the top lip of the drain bowl to make it flush. For the lower part I had to drill a 3” hole in the bottom of the bowl I just made where it connects to the upper part. Then do some more fiberglass work to make the 3” tube around where the drain thru-hull is and connect them together. Because the thru-hull is at an angle I had to make the upper part bigger. It also makes it easier to screw in the plug. I will come back to the drain later to make an insulated plug, but it’s not really necessary, so I will worry about that later. The Last picture above shows the bottom with where I cut the foam away in small area below the drain pipes to form a water collection area in each side.
This picture shows the ½” bronze coupling (Covered here with tape) I installed in the divider to act as a drain between the two sides. When I’m cleaning at home I can pull this plug out and it will drain the whole fish box out through the bottom plug. I glassed this in place before the bottom insulation which made it a lot easier to work with the fiberglass.
The top side of the fish box insulation was a pain but only because I’ve never done it before. I cut pieces to fit around the rigging tubes along the top. Then I used a piece of plywood with wax paper on it to form a bottom and sprayed foam up into the opening to fill it. The kind you use to fill gaps and can get at the hardware store worked great. The one thing I can tell you here is that it’s very difficult to shape the foam under here so take your time on all your set-up. When you get to the top edge around the hatch it does get easier. Again using spray foam was the way to go. I found that in trying to make the top lip it was easier to first glue in place a small piece of foam that gives you the right thickness. After that was in place all around each half, I would cut to fit a piece of ¼ inch plywood to form a bottom of the mold so to speak. Just put a piece of wax paper on it and the foam won’t stick. The foam just oozes out and you can trim it off later. After the foam dries overnight just trim it and shape it and you’re ready to go. (One thing to remember though, once you trim the foam it will start to shrink. Either trim and shape it just before you plan on doing the fiberglass work or just seal it with a coat of resin.) It shrank on me and I had to do quite a bit of work to fix it. You know, that perfectionist thing again!
On to the fiberglass work we go. Most of this was pretty straight forward. I put two layers on most of the fish hold. I did use three layers on the bottom and part way up the sides for strength. May have been over kill but that’s what my fiberglass guy recommended.
I did find that like the picture above, if you cut the cloth oversize and tear off the edges you can overlap the cloth and it comes out real smooth and clean looking. It kind of feathers it out and around corners.
The most difficult part of this for me anyway, was the top. I’ve never done any ceiling type of fiberglass work before. I had a couple of times that once the cloth got weighted down with the resin it would just fall off. When you’re hanging upside down in that little fish hold that really tends to make you mad. I only had myself to blame as I really did not know what I was doing, but let’s just say I was very frustrated and you could tell by my comments. Lucky for me it seemed to be the first layer that was a problem. I’m not really sure what the best way to go is. I just put some resin on the top and after a few minutes when it started to set up, I firmly pressed it in place and let it set-up. The next time I wetted it out is was not a problem. Next layer seems to hold on well. When I did the fiberglass work on the lip I just overlapped the cloth up onto the existing lip. Then I just ground it off at the top and rounded it into the top bevel.
The final plumbing stuff I just used PVC pipe to the macerator pump. From the pump to the thru-hull uses 1” hose. Each side of the fish box has its own drain to the pump. I can use either or both anytime. I do leave both valves off, so if I want to pump anything I have to open the back hatch and open the valve I want before I turn on the pump. Also I put a valve on the left or back side of the tee going into the pump. I can open that up to drain or flush the pump after trips as that is the lowest point.
Well I guess the hatch is last. As I stated earlier, I moved the hinges so that the hatch opened the way it should have all along. I then installed two Taco latches to lock down the hatch. That alone is the start of sealing this fish box. I thought a rubber seal on the inside of the hatch lid was the solution but it did not work very well. I cut a groove in the hatch lid. You can see it in the first pictures. I put the rubber seal in it and after many tries it didn’t even slow the water down. I was trying to put it in the lid because I thought it would be less likely to get damaged. It turns out that just putting a strip along the inside lip does a pretty good job. I think I can get a silicone rubber seal to do this and be both tougher and none absorbent.
In summary; I have only put on one coat of gel coat because I ran out but I will put on a second coat when I get some more. I still need to insulate the hatch cover and make the small insulated bottom plug. But that being said I can give you a great summary on how this all came out because I’ve been using it for months now. This may be the best thing I have done to the boat. I haven’t even insulated the hatch and this is the best ice chest I have ever seen. I can tell you, and those of you that have this fish box will surely back me on this, all the deck water and fish blood would turn that hold into the most disgusting, smelly thing I’ve ever had to deal with. I don’t care what you do to clean it, and you can, while it’s at the dock or at the trailer. It simply does not matter, if you get blood on your decks and have to hose it regularly. Every trip it turns ugly again and to be honest if it’s not sealed, I would rather not even have it at all. I haven’t got the seal perfect yet but it does seal. Now that this fish box does what it should, I could not be happier with the outcome. I now have an ice chest that can handle oversize or odd shaped things with ease. I can just throw 20lb. blocks of frozen squid down there and it’s not a problem. If you fish the west coast you know what that means.
A 5 gallon bucket fits in either side with ease.
Final comments; this is a major job to do this and even knowing that I would still do it again because it changes the way you can use your boat. I think I would try to find someone to shoot the fiberglass with a chopper gun (if it could be done down inside a small place). That would sure make life easier.
1-4’x8’ sheet of 2” thick polyurethane foam
10-yards Fiberglass cloth
3-gallons resin
Hardener
Fiberglass stuff (tools, gloves, rollers, Etc.)
3- cans of spray foam
2-3/4”x24” Stainless steel pipe
8-Stainless steel Tee nuts
PVC Valves and fittings
Macerator pump
½” Bronze pipe coupling and plug
2-Taco F16-3026 latches 119.39
10 Feet of silicone rubber seal
1” 90 degree Thru-hull
7-ft. 1” hose
25’ each red and black 10AWG wire
I hope this helps someone come to an informed decision about a future project for their own boat, Good luck
The short story:
I must say that this project, just like most, took way more time then I had planned. Let’s just say I expected it to be a couple of weekend’s maybe. Well how about a couple of months. This was in no way as simple as it sounded when I started. Literally hours of hanging almost upside down, with all your weight coming down where your ribs meet the edge of the fish hold. Yeah it was that much fun and more! It’s also amazing how much it cost from start to finish, but you know how BOAT stuff is. Basically this was an incredible pain in my, well you know. Now that it’s all said and done, I am very glad I did it, but I’m ECSTATIC that it’s finished. I really can’t tell you what makes me more ecstatic, being done, or having this fish hold in my boat. That being said it really did take me about two months and about 600 bucks. But now I have a very good 280 quart insulated fish hold/ice chest in my Parker. I turned the hatch so it opens forward and sealed the darn thing up so that it keeps the water off the deck out and the cold in, which by the way is easier than I expected. I would recommend that to anyone with this fish hold in their boat. I also put a divider in about the center to let me use part as an ice chest when I want to. Here is the before and after pic’s, and now will move on to the long and drawn out details.
First order of business was to have most of this worked out in my head before I started. Here is some of my thinking on what I wanted to accomplish with this project.
In order to make this more functional I wanted to divide the locker in half. Most of my trips I don’t need that large of a fish hold and it just made sense to me to be able to use some of it for an ice chest. After all, if it’s an ice chest, I may as well utilize it the best I can. Also if I can, I want each half to be basically water tight. I would like the option to fill it with an ice slurry someday. So I’m trying to design this as such. I guess we will have to wait and see if I can manage it, or probably how close I can come to it. The hatch is my biggest problem and I’m going to tackle that last, so we’ll have to wait and see how it comes out. I do have an idea on how I want it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Also very important to me was the divider had to be somewhat removable. I didn’t want to ruin the best part about this fish hold, it’s huge. I needed to be able to remove it if we were expecting larger fish. I also need it to be waterproof. I need to keep the fish stuff on one side and the ice chest stuff on the other. I don’t need a bunch of fish blood in the ice chest. Although that would probably keep the wife off the boat in the future
Last, I need to be able to drain or pump out each side individually. That ended up being more trouble then I first thought. In the end I found a simple way to do it, but it did take me a while, and with quite a few ideas having to be thrown aside until I finally found one that I was happy with. I am permanently installing two stainless ¾”drain pipes through, and into the bilge area of the boat. These two pipes will each have a ball valve before connecting together at the macerator pump. This way I can pump either side of the fish hold without it bleeding over into the other side. It also keeps it very simple inside the fish hold. I may be able to get away without needing a screen of some kind and just having a pickup about ¼” off the bottom.
So here we go. The First problem I had to face and where I actually started this project was one of the three rigging tubes running from the gas tank compartment to the bilge had been cut out. It had been cut off so it only stuck out about 2 inches into the fish hold from each side. Maybe from the factory so nobody accidentally cuts into the tubes with the gas lines, I don’t know, but I sure wish they would have cut it cleanly. It looked more like someone cut it with a hammer then a saw. I couldn’t use couplings anyway so it didn’t really matter, but with my 1½” bait tank drain line in there it was way too hard to get to, so I wasn’t able to square it up very well. I did know that if I was going to make this fish hold sealed, I would need to close up this pipe. Not the end of the world, but a pain in the neck for sure. I needed to put about 21 inches of 2” PVC pipe into this open section and I couldn’t get the drain line completely out without removing my bait tank. I just did that job a few months back and I’m not doing that again for awhile, so I needed another option. I ended up cutting a piece of pipe to fit and then slicing it in half for about 6”. I pulled the drain line up into the fish hold, slid the pipe onto the drain line and then pulled it back through. The open section let me get the pipe in place. I just used PVC glue to put the small piece back in place. Then carefully so I would not get any resin in the pipe, I hope, I wrapped the joint with fiberglass cloth that I had presoaked with resin.
In these pictures you can see the fiberglass cloth. The first picture you can see the 6” piece I sliced out so I could get the hose pulled up to allow the pipe to pop up into place.
Now I could focus on the actual project. I had to make a decision of where to put the divider. Since the fish hold is fairly large I was thinking of making one side smaller than the other. I felt that if I make both sides different sizes it would give me more options. The hard part is that I have to guess how much usable space I will have when the project is completed. I decided to make a pattern for the divider. It will help me decide where to place it and I felt that in order to get a good fit the best way was to make a pattern. So I took my time and made the pattern fit well. My thinking was that I needed it to fit very well if I wanted it to be strong. Now after fitting the pattern divider it gave me a great look and feel for how the final outcome would be. After making the pattern I traced it onto ½” marine plywood and cut it out. Once sanded, it fit nicely. Now that the divider was made I could use the pattern as a test piece. So I cut out the center of the pattern to find out how big I wanted the removable part to be. I got lucky and liked the way it looked on the first try. Now with the pattern realistic I could make the final decision where to place the divider. Moving the divider to one side makes the opening at the top smaller, so I had to be careful not to go too far either way. I also learned later, it’s amazing how much smaller it is when you put two inches of insulation all around the inside. That actually worked out to be about a full 4’x8’ sheet of 2” foam. Anyway after many ponder beers ( I love that, got it from someone here at Classic Parker) and my buddies input, I ended up with the divider only about 2” off of center. Once I decided on that it was easy to cut the divider. After sanding I marked and drilled holes to attach the removable divider. Installed stainless Tee nuts on one side and then covered each side with a sheet of fiberglass cloth. Once sanded, and after making sure the plumbing would work, I glassed it in place and now it’s on to the plumbing.
I had already decided to use a macerator pump and actually picked one up a couple of years ago on sale just for this project. So now it’s time to install the two stainless pipes for the drain. I had already made sure the plumbing would work and had drilled the holes earlier. They turned out to be 3” from each side of the divider and 5” off the bottom. This will keep it in the small protected area next to the divider. Not that anything will really damage the drain pipe but it will also keep any fish from bumping into it when the center is open. Finding the spot for the pipes in the bilge turned out to be pretty easy. Of course it involved another ponder beer. Although my bilge is getting pretty busy, the place I needed the pipes to enter was not a problem at all. The pump, well that’s another thing altogether, and I might even need a couple more ponder beers for that one. The pipes are just off the bottom and just to the starboard side of center. There’s a ridge along the bottom, kind of looks like molding, and as it turned out right above that was perfect. After a bunch of measurements and that ponder beer, it all laid out on paper well. It will have a slightly downward angle into the fish hold. That’s part of the reason why I moved it up to 5” off the bottom in the fish hold. If the angle was too great I might have a hard time with fittings. By the way there is nothing in the section aft of the fish hold on my Parker.
The foam insulation is a long story but the jest of it is, after looking all over for polyurethane foam and for whatever reason having a hard time finding it out here on the west coast, I asked my neighbor about it. He has a roofing business and uses it all the time. He gave me a 4’x8’x2” sheet he had left over from a previous job. It just doesn’t get any better than that. I really hadn’t decided what thickness I wanted, but that kind of settled it. The foam is very easy to work with but I will give a word of caution. That word is RESPIRATOR. I had no idea and was told by a guy at the shop where I got my fiberglass supplies. It’s just like fiberglass, the dust is very fine, and it gets into everything and itches the same way. Cutting the foam to fit was no real problem, you can use a knife or cut it with a saw. I just took my time and fit it better then I really had to, that perfectionist thing again. Sometimes I hate it, but that’s just the way I am so I forgive myself. The wife gets a little tired of it, but she just stays out of the way. I think she’d like it a lot more if I was working on the house instead of the boat I did find that it’s much easier to cut the foam into sections and glue them in instead of big pieces. I tried both and found that when I worked on front and back side of each half, it was much easier to put it in, in two pieces. I could get a much better fit and it was faster, easier and a way better use of the foam. It didn’t leave me with a bunch of weird shaped pieces of foam left over. I also asked the fiberglass guy what I should use to glue it in place and he said I could use 5200 or I could just use resin. So resin it is, here we go.
These pictures show how I clamped the foam in place for the resin to set-up.
The bottom was definitely a challenge. I wanted a way to keep the drain plug, have access to it if I ever needed to reseal or replace it or anything, and have insulation also. Man nothing is ever easy if you want to do it right. This was really a pain but I think I got it right. I made an upper and lower part of this so I could also have an insulation plug to make it awesome. There’s probably a better and/or easier way, but here’s what I came up with.
I glued some plywood together and cut it basically round. I turned it on the lathe to get it to the 4” size I wanted. I glued another piece of plywood to it to form the lip I needed at the top. I put a couple of coats of resin on it to seal it up and smooth it out. After sanding, it came out pretty nice. Then I spread some plumbers putty in the corner to round it out. Next, and don’t tell my wife, I dipped it in this hot wax thing-a ma-bob she has in the bathroom. It’s some hot paraffin wax bath thing she says makes her hands feel better. I don’t know, but it sure puts a pretty even coat of wax on anything you dip in there. May not be by the book, but it got the job done. After a few layers of fiberglass I got a pretty nice bowl for the upper part of the drain. I cut away some of the foam to countersink the top lip of the drain bowl to make it flush. For the lower part I had to drill a 3” hole in the bottom of the bowl I just made where it connects to the upper part. Then do some more fiberglass work to make the 3” tube around where the drain thru-hull is and connect them together. Because the thru-hull is at an angle I had to make the upper part bigger. It also makes it easier to screw in the plug. I will come back to the drain later to make an insulated plug, but it’s not really necessary, so I will worry about that later. The Last picture above shows the bottom with where I cut the foam away in small area below the drain pipes to form a water collection area in each side.
This picture shows the ½” bronze coupling (Covered here with tape) I installed in the divider to act as a drain between the two sides. When I’m cleaning at home I can pull this plug out and it will drain the whole fish box out through the bottom plug. I glassed this in place before the bottom insulation which made it a lot easier to work with the fiberglass.
The top side of the fish box insulation was a pain but only because I’ve never done it before. I cut pieces to fit around the rigging tubes along the top. Then I used a piece of plywood with wax paper on it to form a bottom and sprayed foam up into the opening to fill it. The kind you use to fill gaps and can get at the hardware store worked great. The one thing I can tell you here is that it’s very difficult to shape the foam under here so take your time on all your set-up. When you get to the top edge around the hatch it does get easier. Again using spray foam was the way to go. I found that in trying to make the top lip it was easier to first glue in place a small piece of foam that gives you the right thickness. After that was in place all around each half, I would cut to fit a piece of ¼ inch plywood to form a bottom of the mold so to speak. Just put a piece of wax paper on it and the foam won’t stick. The foam just oozes out and you can trim it off later. After the foam dries overnight just trim it and shape it and you’re ready to go. (One thing to remember though, once you trim the foam it will start to shrink. Either trim and shape it just before you plan on doing the fiberglass work or just seal it with a coat of resin.) It shrank on me and I had to do quite a bit of work to fix it. You know, that perfectionist thing again!
On to the fiberglass work we go. Most of this was pretty straight forward. I put two layers on most of the fish hold. I did use three layers on the bottom and part way up the sides for strength. May have been over kill but that’s what my fiberglass guy recommended.
I did find that like the picture above, if you cut the cloth oversize and tear off the edges you can overlap the cloth and it comes out real smooth and clean looking. It kind of feathers it out and around corners.
The most difficult part of this for me anyway, was the top. I’ve never done any ceiling type of fiberglass work before. I had a couple of times that once the cloth got weighted down with the resin it would just fall off. When you’re hanging upside down in that little fish hold that really tends to make you mad. I only had myself to blame as I really did not know what I was doing, but let’s just say I was very frustrated and you could tell by my comments. Lucky for me it seemed to be the first layer that was a problem. I’m not really sure what the best way to go is. I just put some resin on the top and after a few minutes when it started to set up, I firmly pressed it in place and let it set-up. The next time I wetted it out is was not a problem. Next layer seems to hold on well. When I did the fiberglass work on the lip I just overlapped the cloth up onto the existing lip. Then I just ground it off at the top and rounded it into the top bevel.
The final plumbing stuff I just used PVC pipe to the macerator pump. From the pump to the thru-hull uses 1” hose. Each side of the fish box has its own drain to the pump. I can use either or both anytime. I do leave both valves off, so if I want to pump anything I have to open the back hatch and open the valve I want before I turn on the pump. Also I put a valve on the left or back side of the tee going into the pump. I can open that up to drain or flush the pump after trips as that is the lowest point.
Well I guess the hatch is last. As I stated earlier, I moved the hinges so that the hatch opened the way it should have all along. I then installed two Taco latches to lock down the hatch. That alone is the start of sealing this fish box. I thought a rubber seal on the inside of the hatch lid was the solution but it did not work very well. I cut a groove in the hatch lid. You can see it in the first pictures. I put the rubber seal in it and after many tries it didn’t even slow the water down. I was trying to put it in the lid because I thought it would be less likely to get damaged. It turns out that just putting a strip along the inside lip does a pretty good job. I think I can get a silicone rubber seal to do this and be both tougher and none absorbent.
In summary; I have only put on one coat of gel coat because I ran out but I will put on a second coat when I get some more. I still need to insulate the hatch cover and make the small insulated bottom plug. But that being said I can give you a great summary on how this all came out because I’ve been using it for months now. This may be the best thing I have done to the boat. I haven’t even insulated the hatch and this is the best ice chest I have ever seen. I can tell you, and those of you that have this fish box will surely back me on this, all the deck water and fish blood would turn that hold into the most disgusting, smelly thing I’ve ever had to deal with. I don’t care what you do to clean it, and you can, while it’s at the dock or at the trailer. It simply does not matter, if you get blood on your decks and have to hose it regularly. Every trip it turns ugly again and to be honest if it’s not sealed, I would rather not even have it at all. I haven’t got the seal perfect yet but it does seal. Now that this fish box does what it should, I could not be happier with the outcome. I now have an ice chest that can handle oversize or odd shaped things with ease. I can just throw 20lb. blocks of frozen squid down there and it’s not a problem. If you fish the west coast you know what that means.
A 5 gallon bucket fits in either side with ease.
Final comments; this is a major job to do this and even knowing that I would still do it again because it changes the way you can use your boat. I think I would try to find someone to shoot the fiberglass with a chopper gun (if it could be done down inside a small place). That would sure make life easier.
1-4’x8’ sheet of 2” thick polyurethane foam
10-yards Fiberglass cloth
3-gallons resin
Hardener
Fiberglass stuff (tools, gloves, rollers, Etc.)
3- cans of spray foam
2-3/4”x24” Stainless steel pipe
8-Stainless steel Tee nuts
PVC Valves and fittings
Macerator pump
½” Bronze pipe coupling and plug
2-Taco F16-3026 latches 119.39
10 Feet of silicone rubber seal
1” 90 degree Thru-hull
7-ft. 1” hose
25’ each red and black 10AWG wire
