Fiberglass salvage or alternate source ideas

[CarvedTones]

I need a few oddball pieces of fiberglass for some work I am doing on my sailboat.I could use other materials but I would prefer solid fg if I can find it. One is that I need 3 or 4 feet of pipe/tube that has an ID of around 1.5". I actually need a couple of 1' pieces and one or two that are about 8". The other thing I am looking for is 3 flat fiberglass panels maybe 1/4" thick and about 1' x 2'. Such things are available but in low quantities as raw materials are quite expensive. I think I have seen some yard tools with the pipe as handles and the panels shouldn't be that hard to find as salvage if I could find a boat salvage yard. but there doesn't seem to be one locally. Any ideas or other sources?

For the curious, the pipes are for a couple of different things. One is as rod holders mounted inside the transom that would hold steel tubing (which I currently have in a wood base) that support a mast/boom crutch and the other is for cockpit drains through the transom. My boat only has one cockpit drain and it is near the front. Besides the worry about getting swamped and not having it drain out quickly, it is a pain at the car wash. The boat is tilted slightly back on the trailer so it doesn't drain the cockpit unitl it has a couple of inches of standing water while on the trailer. The panels are for making a small storage locker. I want fg so I know it won't rot and will be easy to attach to the existing fg (using thickened epoxy) and seal it. PVC (and plastic in general) doesn't do so well.

 

[JimmyC]

bump !

 

[CarvedTones]

I just got home a few minutes ago from helping a friend move. Turns out he has a piece of a broken fiberglass mast that he will give me. That is the tubing/pipe. Still looking for panel pieces, though.

 

[Charles Lent]

Many box trucks and semi trailers are now made using sheets of fiberglass about 1/4 inch thick. You might be able to find a wreck in a salvage yard that has a few good panels left. A battery operated sawzall or similar would get you what you want, likely for very little money as fiberglass has no salvage value. If you don't like crawling through these places and have money to buy new you can likely get 4 X 8 or larger sheets from a truck supply company. Google will likely find it for you.

Charley

 

[CarvedTones]

I didn't have much luck with that, but when I was in the area of one place I stopped in a thrift shop and found a dry box made by Plano (it's a tall heavily built tackle box hinged at one end instead of the back with a watertight seal). It's smaller than the locker I was going to make, but it will hold enough of the stuff, especially a couple of bulky items, to make another small dry box I have enough. I am still going to keep an eye out for salvagable fiberglass though; I have a couple of other orjects on the horizon...