I presume you are saying that all my secondary bonds like bulkheads, liners,
water and fuel tank supports are about to let go. Epoxy has it's place,
ultrlight racing boats where the same strength can be had at much lower
weight and as a glue resorcinol is a pain. I live e in what used to be the
hub of boatbuilding in Canada and have seen many boats new and old repaired
with the same material they were built in that is polyester none that I know
of have yet disintegrated.
John
"DSK" wrote in message
.. .
"Jim Conlin" wrote ...
I figure it'd be somewhat over $10/ft^2.
Core-cell $4-
maybe 4 laminations of:
12 oz. knitted Glass $10/yd = $.80/ft^2/ply
epoxy $70/gal = $.60/ft^2/ply

paint $1/ft^2
plus abrasives, peel ply, fillers, vacuum bag consumables

Vacuum bagging it would be the way to go for bond strength, but knitted
glass? I didn't think that was all that cost effective?

One thing I would like to mention is that hardware store F'glass cloth is
NOT worth it. It's actually a bit more expensive than most mail order,
plus it's crappy quality.

John M wrote:
Just wondering do you guys that use epoxy for everything also use
titanium for auto body repairs after all it's better than steel. It seems
rather silly to repair a polyester and glass boat which is old with epoxy
and the latest high tech fabrics. Why not try resin infusion too


Actually, it's not silly at all. Secondary bonding with polyester is
rather iffy... nowhere near as strong and what's more important, less
reliable (more prone to voids, imperfectly mixed resin, more temp
sensitive, etc etc) so it's less likely to achieve it's best strength.
Epoxy is not that much more expensive (considering the expense entailed by
owning the rest of the boat too) and that little extra is very well worth
it IMHO.

The last boat I did extensive rebuild work on was an old Lightning...
considering that I bought new trailer tires & bearings (or would you
advocate buying cheaper used ones?), new running rigging, new sails, and
fairly nice paint (now this could have been economised on, but would it
have looked as good), the 2 gallons of epoxy that I used to do structural
work was trivial... and I sailed that boat in 20+ knot winds many times,
never broke anything that I'd worked on with epoxy. The first few times I
was nervous, but after that became very confident in the strength of my
work. BTW this included relamating some patches of deck as well as
installing a new mainsheet bridle & traveller, which comes under quite
heavy strain.

OTOH I have seen other boats suffer structural failure in strong winds...
it doesn't look like much fun, but perhaps the skippers are telling
themselves they're glad they didn't spend the money as they take the
pieces home.

DSK