The Upholstery Forum

I have a small job coming up where a covered lid blew off the back deck on his boat and ended up in the street and looks like run over at least once. Anyway, he wants to replace with fiberglass or plastice (or other synthetic material) instead of wood. What would be the best material to use for ease of cutting curves, having a smooth edge after routing/sanding, and will take staples well? I have had mixed experiannce with sawing plastics. Some melt more than cut and kind of make a genteral mess on the edges. Often hard to clean up to a reasonably smooth edge. Others tend to chip out rather than cut.

Ideally, id like something that I can cut with a jigsaw and sand the edges. Not sure there is a plastic that take well to sanding. Ihave a router but that would require more time i think.

Ask your plastic supplier about something called Marine board. They should have it or something similar. That's what i prefer to use on boats. Its very similar to pvc foam board.

Thank you @john!

Also there is a material called starboard if I remember right that I think would do well as a wood replacement. But I believe it's a bit pricey.

Edit to say that I believe this is what john was referring too. And it's called king starboard.

Thanks @bibeejh! yes that was the other name I was trying to remember. I believe they are the same product.

A thought occurred to me that made me remember this post. I have always been a big advocate of recycled plastic products and one of the things that can be made with recycled plastic is plastic lumber. Now, in my experience this stuff isn't great long term in the sunlight as it fades fast and unevenly. But to use it as a seat bottom or hidden structural piece would be awesome. There are quite a few companies out there selling this product and I would be interested to see how it works out. Share your experience with it if you go that route, I'll have a boat to do when I get back to NC this fall and will try this my self.

sounds interesting. Let us know how it works out.

Wow! What an eye opener it was to see how expensive a sheet of plastic is. I thought foam was nuts...lol

Long story short i looked into Starboard. Turn out through a local supplier that they dont carry it but they can get it. $280 a sheet and min order is 2 sheets. I did some researching and I believe it is made from HDPE plastic. HDPE is supposedly easy to machine which was a primary concern for me. So i asked about just a sheet of that. $230 a sheet and they had some in stock. I called the customer and he said that was ok, so I picked some up.

I neglected to get pics of the cutout piece but it was in fact easy to work with using a jigsaw and sanded ok to a degree. Anyway, I wanted to send out a few pics of the project. I was pretty happy with it.

Yup plastic sure is expensive. That's why boats like mastercraft cost so much more but last so much longer.

The new cushion looks awesome!!! Nice work!

@vicstric

Fantastic looking finish. Great Job!

I had no idea that these plastics are so expensive... The job looks great!!