Fibreglass Boats (1958)

Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. M/S of rolls of fibreglass hanging in a warehouse. A man dressed in a boiler suit grabs one of the rolls, pulls down a large sheet and begins to cut the sheet with a big pair of scissors. C/U of the man cutting the roll of fibreglass. C/U of man’s face. M/S of a sheet coming off the roll before being carried away by the man. Narrator asks rhetorically - “who’s ever heard of building a boat with what looks like wallpaper?“ M/S of another man, also in a boiler suit, stirring a gloopy blue mixture in a bucket resting on a plank over an upside down and half-constructed fibreglass dinghy on the warehouse floor. Tilt down to the man tipping generous quantities of gloop over the inside of the boat. The narrator reveals that the gloop is in fact “a special mixture of resin and other materials“ which when blended together with sheets of fibreglass becomes “four times the strength of steel“. M/S of both men carefully lifting a sheet of fibreglass and gently placing it onto th