Many home boatbuilders seem to be master scroungers. They can find cheap and free materials all over the place.

Well, I guess its not really in my nature, although I'm getting a little better.

In the last couple of weeks, I've managed a couple of good scores. In one instance, I happened to be at Lowes for something else and wandered down to find their plexiglas/lexan display. Was checking out prices and stuff to try to figure out how I was ever going to afford something to put in those window frames I've been working on.

Standing to one side of the display was a box with four 36"x72" sheets with a crack at one end. They cut me a really good deal. Not exactly what I was looking for, and a bit thinner than called for but usable and the crack fell in place well enough for me to work around it. I can get all 8 windows out of those four sheets. So far in my testing and initial cutting of 4 of the windows, this material seems quite tough and fits well. I think its going to be very good.

At the very least, it gives me a way to get things closed up and weatherproof. Which will let me move forward with actually finishing the interior and systems.

Next up is obtaining more tools. Always an important thing for any boat builder (and many guys in general).

As mentioned several times before, I've wished I had a router table off and on. Hadn't broken down and spent the money though.

Well, my father-in-law wound up having picked one up reasonably cheap at an estate sale and its been sitting unused in his shop for a while. He read my post about wanting one and offered it up. They were just glad to get it out of the way (and along the way found that the stand it was attached to was beetle infested.

Router table

Its just like the one I grew up with that my Dad had, and as a bonus, has an older, but looks to be in great shape Craftsman Professional line router still attached. Not only does it look to be a pretty good router, having two will let me keep one attached to the table and one loose for freehand stuff.

He was kind enough to bring it minus the beetles.

Router

As a bonus to the deal was one of the small "drill press" rigs that you can strap a handheld drill in for drill press type work. That will be sure to be handy at times, I'm sure.