Tinnie Flooring ideas

[Wazzup01]

I am looking at replacing the false floor in my tinnie soon and was looking at using something else other than plywood. Does anyone have any experiences or ideas with using other materials and whether it is worth it?

Cheers
Wazzup

[Jeremy]

what is wrong with ply? Something else you have in mind?
Jeremy

[Wazzup01]

Nothing wrong with ply. I am just one of those guys who likes to play with stuff when i need to do things. I have been thinking about aluminium honeycomb material used by quintrex i believe, plastic flooring, aluminium plate, etc. Whatever i use i will probably put carpet over it anyway to keep my toes cool.

[Kleyny]

people use ply because at a guess it would be the cheapest.
You could use alloy plate but i think a weight issue might arise if you can cop the price.
depending on the bracing you might get away with perspex. Once again weight ight be an issued as i would think the thickness of perspex required would have to be quite thick.

neil

[pedrodepacus]

hey mate ive seen that honey comb (hexnoflex) stuff and had a play about with it as well and its an easy stuff to work with but it dents easily as its only 1.2mm thick sheet with the honeycomb centre

[batten]

if u dont have any under floor storage, and just want a flat floor, u could fill it in with a pouring foam, it would allow extra flotatiion also. make it smooth, then put ur choice of coverings on top, no hassle bout tiny sinkers or the like getting under the floor

[black runner]

If it is a tinnie with floatation in the thwarts you almost certainly already have level floatation. Be careful putting too much extra floatation under a floor as this will destabalize the level floatation characteristics. Anyway my previous 4m runabout had a 3 or 4 mm chequer plate floor retro fitted between the front and rear thwarts. Cross members with supports to the keel were welded to the bottomside ribs with a piece of angle on each thwart to complete the support framework. Some heavy rubber mat was laid over the floor. It is also important to fit a bilge pump if you can't get access to do any bailing from behind the rear thwart.

Cheers

[oldboot]

I have investigated some exotic materilas for other uses in the past.

foamed PVC might be worth a look comes from 3mm up to 25mm it is has a hardish surface on both sides and a foamed core...... it is consideraly lighter than ply of the same thickness..... not quite as strong..... it is less rigid than ply and as such wont gross fail as early.

the honeycoamed products.. there are many..... some where somehow most of them start as the honeycoam and the outer surfaces get laminated on.

so if you go somewhere that has the core alone ( like boatcraft pacific) they can laminate the outers on as required... the yachtys like 3mm luan ply either side of say 15mm core..... realy light seriously strong.
but you can put almost any sheet material on as faces, i;ve seen ply, aluminium, ABS.

there are other various foam and celular cored plastics that can be used alone or with stuff laminated on

Daymar at thorneside have some exotic ply..... powolina ply with gibboon faces..... this stuff is gorgeous and half the weight of luan.

Dibond.. is a plastic cored aluminium laminate than comes prefinished.... you can do some realy funky things with this stuff.... but there is not much weight advantage over aluminium.

light ply with epoxy and glass fibre is a real option.

fibreglass sheet is a possibility as is fibreglass laminated ply... neither of which are real light.

but when it realy comes down to it the most practical options are ply and aluminium, depending on what you are most comfortable with and are tooled up for.
Every thing else will be much more fiddle and cost.

cheers