Building a laminated wooden boat transom using a marine plywood core and solid mahogany veneers for maximum strength, stability, and a beautiful bright finish.
In this Short from Nomad Boat Building, Mark Reuten shows how combining traditional wooden boat aesthetics with modern epoxy lamination creates a transom that’s durable, repairable, and built to last for decades. Using West System Epoxy, the mahogany veneers are bonded to both sides of the plywood core, then capped with solid wood so no plywood is exposed.
This method gives you the stability of plywood and the refinishable surface of solid wood — the best of both worlds in wooden boat construction.
So this is going to be my transom. I'm using a three-quarter inch plywood core
and then I'm going to be laminating mahogany onto both faces and then we're going to add
a solid wood cap onto the transom as well so that when you're done there's no plywood core
that's exposed at all. I'm working on a project called a Pulsebowl boat. It's a 15-foot sport
fishing boat that's native to the Puget Sound area of Washington state. I'm building a brand
new one using strip construction. I want to pair that hull with an equally stable backbone
and because the transom is part of that structure, plywood is a natural choice for its strength and
stability. By laminating thick solid mahogany veneers to both sides of the transom, I'm going
to create a very durable, long-lasting, and repairable transom. So I'm just exploring all
the different options for grain orientation here. If I'm lucky and if I do my job well,
when I'm done it's going to look like I have just one big broad panel without obvious glue joints.
A couple of these joints need a little bit of fine tuning so I'm just doing that with a block,
some sandpaper attached to it. Nice tight joints, got them organized, that's the way I want them to
be laid out. I'm wetting out both of these surfaces with 105 resin and 207 hardener. I'm going to
thicken this back with some 405 filleting blend. So I would categorize that as a heavy mayonnaise,
warm smooth peanut butter perhaps. Boop-a-dup. I want a really even coating here. Slide that up,
clamp that down. So now we'll just knock the worst of the glue squeeze out over on the sander,
clean up one of these edges. So we still need to add the solid wood cap. We'll put the cap
on using West Systems 105 resin and 205 fast hardener. And it's also time for tea so let's
use some biscuits. Gentle squeeze. And to connect all the dots I'm going to use what's called a
bundle batten. And the beauty of these is that the collective bundle fares out the curve nicely.
One trick for getting great cuts of the jigsaw, take a utility knife and just score along the
line that you want to cut. Use a sharp blade of course. Asking tape can help too. So you can see
how thick that face veneer is and then you can see the core veneer of that plywood. That will
all get buried in adhesive and we're going to have a beautiful transom when we're done that's going
to look great under varnish. And you can sand for years before you work your way down to that
plywood core. I've been using West System products for 30 years. I stand by them 100%.
Pretty hard to find a marine supply that doesn't have West System epoxies on its shelves.
