Refit Progress: Templating, Infusing, and Building a New Laminating Table

/ Floors, Paikea Refit, Working with Composites / By

Key Message: A major refit is a series of small, repetitive, and precise steps. By creating a family “assembly line” for templating and infusion, we’re efficiently producing lightweight, custom composite floors while constantly improving our workshop tools.

Author: Anna & Shayne

Introduction: The Flooring Assembly Line

The transformation of Paikea’s interior continues, one floor panel at a time. This phase of the refit has become a well-oiled, family-run operation. We’ve moved from the initial, complex structural work to a production rhythm: template, infuse, sand, and repeat. In this update, we’re tackling the port-side floors and solving a critical workshop problem: our leaky laminating table.

The Process: From Cardboard to Composite

Creating a perfect-fitting floor for a curved hull is a multi-stage process that the boys have mastered.

  • Precision Templating (Ayden & Harry’s Domain): Using cardboard and a hot glue gun, they create exact templates of the complex shapes around the daggerboard case and hull sides. The key is building “extensions” on the template to account for gaps the old floors left, ensuring the new ones will be a perfect, structural fit.
  • Drilling & Prep (Oliver’s Role): Once the shape is transferred to 20mm PVC foam, the panel is drilled with a grid of holes. These are essential for vacuum infusion, allowing resin to flow evenly through the core material.
  • The Hatch Integration Method: For panels with access hatches, we use a clever multi-step infusion:
    1. Infuse the hatch separately.
    2. Finish and sand it.
    3. Use silicone spacer and temporarily plug it back into the floor panel as a mold insert.
    4. Infuse the entire floor panel, which now laminates a fiberglass lip around the pre-finished hatch, creating a seamless, strong integration.

Upgrading the Workshop: Building a Proper Laminating Table

Our old plywood laminating table was a constant battle. Despite sealing and envelope bagging, its porous nature caused air leaks, making it difficult to achieve a perfect vacuum for infusion.

The Solution: We built a new, truly non-porous table using scrap 20mm PVC foam. We butted the pieces together and will laminate a fiberglass skin over the top to create a perfectly flat, airtight surface. This table isn’t just a workshop upgrade; it’s a future piece of boat furniture, destined to become our new saloon or galley table.

Conclusion: Momentum Through Process

This stage of the refit is about momentum. By breaking down a massive job—replacing all the interior floors—into a repeatable process and getting the whole crew involved, we’re making steady, visible progress. Each infused panel is a step closer to a lighter, stronger, and modernized Paikea, and each tool we improve, like the new table, makes every future job that much easier.

Interested in Learning More?

This project builds on the core composite skills we’re constantly refining on Paikea. For more deep dives into our methods, check out these related resources:

See More of our Structural Floor Build.

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