Hey, nobody says you can't reinvent the wheel. What irritates me is that
the people who have spent years developing the proper formulations and
techniques are expected to work for free. Sort of like saying "Hey.
There's nothing in this book except the letters I learned in kindergarten.
Why should I pay the author?" If enough people adopt that attitude, no one
will bother publishing anything.

Maybe the rest of you find boatbuilding so easy that you can devote your
energies to doing the tasks that come bundled with a purchase from System
Three or West Systems; product support, trouble shooting, documentation,
storage, shipping and handling. I'd rather buy small quantities of
ready-to-use stuff in order to spread the cost over time and profit from
their mistakes.

A recurring theme in the criticism of technical reports is that they never
discuss the blind alleys, fires, explosions and other events that ran the
project cost up to two or three times what was expected. To read the report
or listen to the presentation one would think that it was just a matter of
doing X, then Y, and then Z; of course.

At GD it was common to see a gallon can of epoxy blazing away on the
apron -- thermal runaway. Another recurring problem was quality control --
how do you know that the "wet out" was complete when the exterior looks
fine. Ultrasound scanning of every square inch is messy and expensive. (To
couple the transducer to the skin being examined, one uses a gel.) It also
requires operator skills that take time to develop. ...

Ah, well. Sorry. Rant over.
Roger

http://home.earthlink.net/~derbyrm

"Mac" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 04:27:41 +0000, Lew Hodgett wrote:

Roger Derby wrote:

The stuff from Dow is not suitable for use in boat building.

Not quite.

There are only 3-4 basic resin suppliers in the world.

Dow, Ciba-Geigy and Shell come to mind.

[snip]

I think Shell sold their epoxy works to Resolution Performance Products.
There is a lot of information about various formulations at
www.resins.com, the Resolution website.

--Mac