"Bob" wrote in message
ps.com...

Dow COrning 795 aint your grandpa's silicone seal........... think
"structural" silicone. Really heavy duty industrial hold twin tower
windows in w/o fastners really thick kinda silicone.

get their spec sheet and check the lap strength for diffrent materials
and strech numbers. I used it when I fabricated my 7"x15"x 3/8"
polycarb dead lights. Min DC 795 thickness :1/8". Of course fastned
with ten 316L 1/4"x20 PH MS.

At the risk of (1) being exposed as a boatbuilding dunce or (2) even worse,
starting a thread as hotly contested as the hypotheteical 40' vertical
sal****er still, the comment about Dow Corning 795 leads me to ask a (naive)
question.

Could this high-strength, high-grab, somewhat flexible adhesive, or one
somewhat similar, be used to build a boat from aluminum panels, somewhat the
way epoxy is used for stitch-and-glue with plywood?

I realize there would have to be a lot of modifications to the construction
process. But is the concept reasonable with today's adhesives? Certainly DC
795 seems to have no trouble bonding to aluminum.

(Dow says 795 is not for use on surfaces continuously under water, so that
would be a problem for anything except trailered boats or dinghy-type uses.
But again, I'm just raising the question, not proposing it as a real option.
And there may be other adhesives that would be OK for underwater
applications.)

Alex