Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:05:39 -0500, Boater
wrote:

Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:
Any of you have any experience with doing it on your own?

I've been thinking about purchasing one of those controlled heat guns
and doing my own boat (soon to be boats).

I wonder if it would be worth it - over time that is.

NOTE TO JAMESGANG - please feel free to ignore this post as it's
boating related. I'll post something unrelated to boats later in the
day so you can get off ranting about off-topic threads.

Tom, I'm not sure it is worth the time or money to do it on your own.

I have an "itinerant" shrink wrap guy do my 21' Parker. He spends about
an hour to an hour and a half rigging the support tapes so the wrap
hangs properly, and then applies the wrap from huge rolls, using a
propane heat gun to shrink it.

I watched him do it the first year. There's quite a bit of "learned"
skill involved, which I am sure you can learn. But...

It cost me $7.50 a foot to have it done. I was charged for a 22' boat
because of the outboard lower unit extension.

That's pretty cheap - $165 - for a top-notch job done by a journeyman.

Your Ranger is about the same size.

I'd pay to have it done right, rather than investing in the plastic, the
ties, the tape, and the heat gun.

Around here, it's $10 to $11/ft at the shop - if you get a mobile guy,
it's a little higher - $13 to $15/ft. I heard it went up this year to
around $15/ft at shops and $17/ft mobile.

Either way, a $600 investment in a gun, another $5/600 for wrap/tape
and string - that's a grand or so roughly in terms of investment.
Propane is cheap enough.

So at 20 feet times - say $15/ft average thats $300/yr to have have it
done. Over three years, you should be able to at least make your
money back on the original investment and everything past that is at
whatever the cost of the wrap is.

Then again, what with my back problems, it might not be such a good
idea.



Being the imaginary lover of so many Hollywood starlets, I just don't
have the energy.