From there it was a simple matter to place the foam back in the shell, lining it up as it was before. And....wait for it....yup, I paid the price for my haste!
While the Divinycell laid in the shell nicely, it didn't fully conform to all of the contours. For the next 30 minutes, I was scrambling around, looking for every piece of compliant (and not so compliant) ballast that I could find. Window casing, baseboard, short 2 x 4's, paint cans, 6 ft level, bags of grout, bags of plaster, more paint cans, yup, I even have a bag of Weed n Feed in there...It wasn't pretty.
Sand bags, my friend, sand bags.
Not real sandbags. I have a shop bin with a dozen or so two gallon zip lock bags filled with sand. Double bagged for leakage protection in fact; shop sand bag weights are a good use of old Ziplocks. And another dozen half gallon sized. Probably 60+ lbs of sand.
The nice thing about sandbags is that they conform nicely to curves and odd shapes/places. BTW, not actually “filled” with sand, more like ¾ full, which works better for laying down into shape conformation.
The other nice thing is that they are always there, under the bench, reusable time after time. If the bag gets worn I just triple bag it with another leftover Ziplock.
At least you didn’t have to stack the drill press vice, tabletop sanders and tool boxes in the boat. Not that I have ever resorted to such a thing myself.
50+ lbs of sand may not be enough. I have seen the likes of that photo above in my shop many times. DougD probably has a photo of heavy shop contents piled atop the seat in his Optima.
My favorite quick weight to add, often atop the sandbags, are the ubiquitous 13oz coffee cans filled with the screws, nuts, bolts and washers I use most often. A coffee can filled with screws weighs 4lbs and I keep 16 of them mostly full with hardware. That’s another 64 lbs or quick weight.
BTW, plastic 2 liter soda bottle trays are perfectly sized to hold eight of those metal coffee cans, and have sturdy holes molded in for a balanced rope or strap carry handle.
When I travel for maintenance work I often bring a couple of those 2 liter trays along with my tools. 16 easy to identify cans of hardware.
A sample of the contents screws, nuts or fasteners is hot glued to the lid, so I can grab the can I want at a glance. That is also a boon in my own the shop, and it is easy to see when I need to replenish my supply of drywall or self-tapping screws. I love drywall screws and self tappers.
