Fun with Epoxy

In the end I went with GRS for my epoxy. They were very prompt about delivery.

I mixed up a small batch and epoxied some glass cloth across two peices of ply. I let it set for 24 hours and then tested to destruction.

With a lot of abuse, the cloth delaminated where boards were joined together the. Not easily - I was jumping on the boards where they were set up against a step. The plys actually separated.

In addition I glued two scrap prices together with thickened epoxy and a very quick and dirty fillet. After much jumping up and down, I managed to break them apart - the wood broke, not the glue.

I am quite certain I could do a much better job, both of glassing and gluing, so I have every confidence in this Epoxy stuff. 8-)

Next tests,
* Gluing Oak to Ply.
* Gluing Oak to Oak.
* Glassing a trailing edge.

Ruining Wood

I'm getting to the stage where I will start assembling the various odd shaped bits of wood onto a frame to make the skeleton for my boat.

In order to do this I need to build the Center Board Case, as two of the frames but up against this.

The Center Board case needs to be glassed. Since I'm making up the Case, it seemed appropriate to make up the Centerboard at the same time.

This means I need to Shape and Glass the Center Board, and Glass the Case.

I have never used Epoxy before for much beyond fixing the pendulum of a clock - please don't ask. So I reasoned that I would make up a test rudder from cheap ply instead of the good marine stuff, and glass it. This would be a learning experience, and I would not ruin anything expensive.

Along the way I figured out the following

* Prime the epoxy pumps by pumping out a little into a scrap cup and bin it. It means wasting a little epoxy, but not nearly as much as if you pump out too little hardener and work everything up only to find it doe not set.

* Epoxy goes a lot further than you'd expect. I made up what I thought was about half what I needed for my test piece only to have twice what I needed.

* How to glass the trailing edge is not obvious - try this link, go to the foils section - mothboat

* You can use the glue lines in the plywood to keep you rudder or center board symetrical.

I made a lot of mistakes, which was good, it meant I learned at least what not to do.

Beale Park Boat Show

I went along to beale park boat show, Wonderful place. I got to sail around in a deben lugger which is a lug yawl, using carbon fiber spars. A nice mix of the old and new. I saw the Bay Raider and a build in progress of a Secret. There was a Thames Punt with a nice rack at the back to hold one Champagne bottle and Two glasses. Just two mind, three would be a crowd.



The real highlight was meeting the builder of this, a retired pilot's first build. If he had told me he'd been doing this for a living for most of his life, this boat would have made me believe it.


And along the way I came across an interesting car...

Getting Epoxy in Dublin

Prices in EUROs, as converted June 07.

Note: DiscountMarines info is from their OLD web site.

As far as I know this information is correct as of today 6th June 2007. This is not a comprehensive list. If this infomation is incorrect, or you have another supplier that I could add to the list, drop in a comment and I will try to update the list as and when I have time. Free information is worth what you pay for it. If you are buying large quantities, go do some further research 8-).

Epoxy and boat shows.

Currently trying to source epoxy now in Ireland. I will post a table here soon with prices, delivery, and landed cost per liter.

I'm also off to the Beale Park Boat Show on the thames this weekend. Expect Pictures.

I've cut most of the plywood peices that I traced out on the 18mm ply. You really gotta love a decent JigSaw.