Monday, December 30, 2013

The Birth Of A Drift Boat - Part 1

I guess Phil Croff and I have been talking about doing this for at least a couple years now and with a couple of his Croff Craft Custom Drift Boats to be built this winter, it was perfect timing to chronicle one in a series of posts on T.F.M.

Each post will include a set of photographs and just a bit of narrative to explain what is going on in each phase of the build.  The plan is for these posts to drop every Monday morning and in the end there should be a dozen or so posts which will follow one of Phil's drift boat builds from start to finish.  


A lot of work goes into the creation of each one of these drift boats and getting the foundation right, like in many things in life, is of the greatest importance.  The hull of the drift boat is put together using cedar strips, closed cell high density foam, a high quality marine grade epoxy, and also S2 fiberglass cloth. 

The hull is laminated together, then the billet gets pressed into form, and finally the chine rails get built in as structural members.








I really appreciate Phil giving the T.F.M. readership the inside look on the building of one of his drift boats and look forward to the future posts of this series.

Visit the Croff Craft website for more information on these beautiful and river worthy drift boats.

3 comments:

DJ said...

I see this boat is made with S glass. Are there any plans for a slightly faster E glass model in the future?

The NOCO Nympher said...

Look forward to following the completion of the drift boat! I appreciate you guys sharing the process!

blueheron said...

Yes I'm with NOCO on this, I will be watching this one. Might inspire me to break down an buy some plans...