Fiberglass tongue and groove panels?

[Tony G]

Ok. Which one of you has even the slightest idea of where a guy can snag some fiberglass tongue and groove panels? I checked the local hardware stores, box stores, McMaster-Carr, googled, oggled... There must be some source for the average home DIYer to lay hands on sheets of this stuff. I thought for sure somebody would have a tub surround kit that had a T&G pattern. Nope.

Free beer for the first confirmed source!!!!

[Commander 147]

Tony

Are you looking for a bead board type panel? Soemthing like this?

http://www.outwatercatalogs.com/lg_d...ight/beadboard

[Tony G]

Jerry

That is similar to what I found digging around. It does look like a nice product and I'm going to tell a friend who has a wrap around porch about it as she's getting close to replacing some of the original bead board.

If I can pull-off this attachment, this is what I'm looking for. I'm hoping it's flimsy enough to take a bend...

Just in case anyone is interested, on the San L Morse site there is a Bristol Channel Cutter for sale called Nereus. That is where these photos came from. She also has a nifty little easy chair that folds down into the upper portion of a quarter berth. I'm gonna steal that idea!

[Tony G]

We may have to go with regular bead board panels applied over plywood. It has been done with great results on numerous boats before. But I liked the subtle depth the tongue and groove added to the field of white. Plus, I think it would be easier to clean being the grooves are realatively 'open' when compared to bead board. Cutting our own grooves the into the furniture surface is not impossible, it's just too time consuming and the possiblilty of making a mistake is higher than I would like to deal with.

[Commander 147]

I built the cabinets for my daughter's kitchen and I used a beaded panel in the doors. I used my incra fence on the router table to easily make the panels. If you have a router table there are a lot of differant ways you can build a fence that can easily be indexed to make the panels. A V-bit would give you the look your after. And there are no large spaces on these boats so all your pieces would be small enough to handle pretty easily. Just a thought.

Sail on _/)~~~_/)~~~

[Tony G]

Looks like the winner of the free beer for life goes to Mr. John Cole! He is the webmaster at Sam L. Morse and shot me an e-mail that suggested a company named Crystaliner out in California may have been the source of the newly coveted panel...

Jerry, the reason I'm shying away from making my own is the new interior will, once again, have radiused corners and while I haven't given it much thought I think it will be difficult to get a consistent cut over those surfaces. Maybe you know of a technique? I'm always willing to learn.