Trolley Cradle

[Alex D]

The old carpet and wooden blocks on my trolley cradle have had their day.

My current plans are to lay up something on the bottom of the boat with camping mat foam / pipe lagging foam  / glass / epoxy etc. Any suggestions on materials and techniques would be welcome.

[John Murrell (Guest)]

Alex,
 
For what it’s worth, the way I make a cradle is to turn the boat upside down and use it as a mould, get some heavy duty polythene â€" the stuff they sell in the Sheds for garden cloches is ideal. You masking tape this to the hull where you want the cradle to be with plenty of overlap. This stops bog getting onto your precious paintwork!
Get some glass fibre mat and cut it to the approximate size / length you will need and lay layers of it onto the hull and resin it all in. Before I put the last two layers on I put in two blocks of wood so that the trolley uprights can bolt to it and also I cut a length on 2” plastic waste pipe in half and bog that in too â€" it adds to the overall strength. Allow the whole lot to cure overnight and then remove from the hull. Trim to shape with a jigsaw, remembering that the glass will blunt the blade in no time.
For the padding on the top I use one of those green plastic grass type mats again from a Shed, cut to shape and evosticked on.
Once it’s all made up I put it back on the hull, offer up the trolley and screw it all together.
 
Jobs a good ‘un as they say!!

[FuzzyDuck]

I agree completely with what John says having just done excactly the same on my boat at Christmas. 
One more note of caution. Make sure that the resin cannot run down the  plastic sheet and onto the hull.  I didn't and the follwoing morning I has a few major resin runs down the hull to the gunnels.... and yes when you chisel them off they do take all the paint off right dowen to bare wood!
Simon

[Jeremy C]

Excellent explanation, just make sure you use Epoxy and not polyester resin or it will melt through the plastic sheeting and onto your hull!!

[Cookie (Guest)]

I use polyester on top of plastic sheeting with no problems... Maybe test the plastic/vs polyester first - an epoxy cradle sounds pretty expensive to me!

Cheers

Mike

[John Murrell (Guest)]

Agree with Mike, I have always used polyester resin with no issues. I suspect that the problem the Jeremy refering to is that when the resin cures it gives off lots of heat and this would melt the plastic shhet. The answer to this is to reduce the amount of catylyst you use (but ensure that you mix it thoroughly!) which will inturn reduce the curing time and hence the amount of heat generated.

[angus]

A small point comared to having epxoy or polyester running over your paint work. I used some camping mat foam for some exta padding on my trailer and in one trip (admittedly about 400 miles round trip) it had compressed down to somthing like solid plastic with out much padding so i would be wary of using it.

[Alex D]

Thanks for the advice which is excellent as always.

[Alex D]

And the result of about five hours over a couple of weeks and £25 is shown below.  Hopefully Grimley won't leave her trolley on the beach again.

[FuzzyDuck]

Nice job alex, has inspired me to finish mine. Since I moulded it at Christmas it has just been lying in the back of the garage!
Simon
 

[Phil Brown]

Now that the Big Orange Shed doesn't stock green plastic mats anymore, anyone got any preferences for the top layer of a trolley, and where to get it from?

[sam293]

astroturf type door mats, or even  a strip of astroturf, garden centers etc will supply this very cheeply!

[Alex D]

I used a ribbed astroturf door mat from homebase for about £4.00 (see the picture above).  It is still working really well