Dave Allyn ) writes:
Hey all, I came accross an epoxy resin for "fiberglass repair" made by
bondo that is sold in stores around me, including walmart. It uses I
believe 7 drops of hardner (included) for one oz of resin.

As mentioned, that does not sound like epoxy. Bondo usually refers to
polyester resin, often bought in auto stores for filling rust holes in car
bodies, with or without fibreglass cloth reinforcement. When I use it I
put 2 drops of hardner per teaspoon of resin. I'm currently using
polyester mixed with sanding dust to fill gaps in a small boat, and wiped
on the exposed edges of plywood (twice) to seal the end grain. It has the
advantage of soaking into the wood in its pure form, and then curing when
wiped with a second coat mixed with hardener.

The problem for stitch and glue is polyester is not a glue (adhesive). It
sticks to many surfaces just like paint, but doesn't have sufficient
bonding strength to hold parts together under stress.

If you want to save money over buying less-than-bulk quantities of epoxy
for a small boat you might look at the info on stitch-and-glue
construction with polyurethane construction adhesive (aka "liquid nails")
on David Beede's website, www.simplicityboats.com. I use this adhesive
with and without screws for chine batten construction on small boats I
build for my own use. I've sucessfully glued skids (dual keels) to the
bottom of one plywood boat with it taking out the screws after it
cured, and have just put a pair on the current boat the same way.


Has anyone here tried useing such a product to make a stitch and glue
boat? Aside from the dosage problems with such a small ratio, can
anyone think of any other problems that would come up?

Thanks in advance.

dave


email: dallyn_spam at yahoo dot com
please respond in this NG so others
can share your wisdom as well!


--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William R Watt National Capital FreeNet Ottawa's free community network
homepage: www.ncf.ca/~ag384/top.htm
warning: non-FreeNet email must have "notspam" in subject or it's returned