- Joined
- Jul 18, 2011
- Messages
- 17,711
Greetings . . .
With boating season only a month or 2 away in the Northeast (USA) I have been busy doing some canvas work for my boat. My boat only came with the mooring cover, not the full camper-style enclosure. So that is on my project list for this year. . . to make an enclosure.
The back story is that a friend of mine who has the same boat as I lost his bow section cover during a storm. He asked if I would make him a new one, using my bow cover as a template. I said "sure" . . . if I could use his camper enclosure canvas as templates to make my enclosure. Thus the deal was on. I got his bow cover done and now I am delving into the camper enclosure. Boat canvas is not quite in my wheel house, but so far I have enjoyed gaining the skills.
The camper canvas for my boat is made up of 8 panels, each of them have 'glass' (i.e. strataglass) in them for light. The plastic/glass material is a bit pricey . . . around $8/sq. ft. . . . To do all of the panels, I had to buy 3 'rolls' of the 'glass' material @ around $1K. I went with the thicker 0.040" glass, rather than cheaping-out with 0.030" glass. Adding the canvas, edge binding tape, zippers, snaps, etc . . . I'm into it for about $1,700. I think the canvas enclosure from the factory (or locally) would be $7-10K. So the money equation works out.
I've spent the last day or 2 cutting out the glass panels and sewing in the edge binding. . . 8 glass panels total, using about 100 ft of edge binding. (I had 1 foot extra from the roll
).
Anyway, here is a picture of some of the glass panels with edge binding sewn in. . . .
.
.
I had the blue binding tape left over from some other canvas work, so I used that on the window sections, even though the canvas itself will be black.
Next steps will be to make the canvas portions (using the black canvas pieces shown as templates). My plan is to initially make them in a roughed-in fashion and a bit over-sized, so I can more precisely fit them to my boat and finish off the edges, locate the snaps, etc.
I'll be posting updates as I go.
With boating season only a month or 2 away in the Northeast (USA) I have been busy doing some canvas work for my boat. My boat only came with the mooring cover, not the full camper-style enclosure. So that is on my project list for this year. . . to make an enclosure.
The back story is that a friend of mine who has the same boat as I lost his bow section cover during a storm. He asked if I would make him a new one, using my bow cover as a template. I said "sure" . . . if I could use his camper enclosure canvas as templates to make my enclosure. Thus the deal was on. I got his bow cover done and now I am delving into the camper enclosure. Boat canvas is not quite in my wheel house, but so far I have enjoyed gaining the skills.
The camper canvas for my boat is made up of 8 panels, each of them have 'glass' (i.e. strataglass) in them for light. The plastic/glass material is a bit pricey . . . around $8/sq. ft. . . . To do all of the panels, I had to buy 3 'rolls' of the 'glass' material @ around $1K. I went with the thicker 0.040" glass, rather than cheaping-out with 0.030" glass. Adding the canvas, edge binding tape, zippers, snaps, etc . . . I'm into it for about $1,700. I think the canvas enclosure from the factory (or locally) would be $7-10K. So the money equation works out.
I've spent the last day or 2 cutting out the glass panels and sewing in the edge binding. . . 8 glass panels total, using about 100 ft of edge binding. (I had 1 foot extra from the roll
).Anyway, here is a picture of some of the glass panels with edge binding sewn in. . . .
.
.
I had the blue binding tape left over from some other canvas work, so I used that on the window sections, even though the canvas itself will be black.
Next steps will be to make the canvas portions (using the black canvas pieces shown as templates). My plan is to initially make them in a roughed-in fashion and a bit over-sized, so I can more precisely fit them to my boat and finish off the edges, locate the snaps, etc.
I'll be posting updates as I go.
