Suppliers

Two questions new builders ask are: what special tools do I need, and where do I get supplies?

Regarding tools: nothing.  If you have basic tools in your garage, you can get started building a boat.  To set up the frames for a Farrier requires no more than a jigsaw and a drill.  Fiberglassing requires nothing more than pumps or a kitchen scale (I much prefer the scale), mixing cups, stir sticks, and squeegees.  I bought most of my fiberglass supplies from the local paint store or from Fiberglass Supply.  I bought rolls of carbon fiber, carbon unidirectional, and Kevlar from Carb.com.  Two good suppliers for fiberglass, fillers, tapes, etc. are USCI and Raka, although Raka's order fulfillment can be sketchy at times.  Noah's Marine has a good supply of marine plywood and other materials (like Core-Cell and balsa core) but their shipping costs can be exorbitant.  I'm not sure why, since I lived closer to them than to any other supplier.  I bought lots of epoxy from API when I lived in California as well as Dow Derakane vinylester from Aircraft Spruce.  I bought a case of Core-Cell from Composites One.  These days with shipping adding a significant amount to cost it pays to shop around and try to find the closest supplier to your workshop.

The only truly specialized tool I bought was a vacuum pump, and as I describe on  my materials testing page, it didn't make a big difference in laminate weight.  If you're building a cored boat you're most likely using light enough laminates in the skins that, with proper technique, you can get to the ideal 50% fiber/resin ratio by hand, without vacuum bagging.  There are other things that will make a far bigger difference in final weight.  A few builders are also experimenting with resin infusion and those who get it right seem to love it but the $10k in experimentation, disposables, and startup costs didn't seem worth it to me for a single boat.

The only semi-specialized tools I have are a Makita 7" sander/polisher with a soft polishing pad between the sanding disc and the tool's hard pad, which prevents the edge of the disc from gouging.  I use this with 80 to 120 grit discs, because it takes off much more material than a random orbital sander.  I also have a few 5" random orbital sanders and a 6" Porter Cable r.o., which covers large flat areas much faster than the 5".