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It is the shape from which all subsequent molds are built. It can be a solid form or it can be an actual prototype. It can be a wholly new design, or it can be a preexisting boat that has been modified. Regardless of how the plug came into existence, it must be perfect. Since all future boats will be exact replicas of the plug, great care is taken to make sure the lines are fair, the finish is perfectly smooth, and the dimensions are accurate.
In today's world of fiberglass boat production, this is done with state of the art drafting programs and cut with million dollar milling machines to within 0. Fifty years ago, this was done by a guy named Rusty with a sanding block and a dust mask. To look at the comparisons between the fine sloping, gently curving lines of a classic fiberglass boat, complete with tail fins, headlights, and any number of other unique qualities culled from the imagination of builder, and today's cookie cutter, almost indistinguishable, factory boats is to tacitly acknowledge the art of craftsmanship that is so glaringly absent in today's assembly line world.
Once the plug has been perfectly faired and polished, it is then waxed and treated with a mold-release agent. Gelcoat, which is simply heavily pigmented polyester resin, is then sprayed over the plug.
The mold is then left to cure for sometime, usually about a week, before separating it from the plug. Once the mold has been separated from the plug, the mold itself must be polished and any defects or tooling marks left over from the separation must be repaired.
The mold is then waxed and treated with release agents and the boat building can finally begin. The building of the boat is similar to the building of the mold, but it's built from the outside-in. First, pigmented gelcoat, this is the color you see when you look at a boat, is sprayed inside the mold. The gelcoat is air inhibited. This means, when it's exposed to air, it won't fully cure. This is done to assist the boat builder.
The side touching the mold � the future outside of the boat � cures, while the side exposed to the air remains tacky. This is done so the builder can lay up the fiberglass directly into the partially cured gelcoat. Layer after layer of wetted out fiberglass is added until the desired thickness is achieved. It is then popped out of the mold and the boat moves on to the next stage of the building process.
Fifty years ago, this was done by hand. Sheets of fiberglass cloth, woven roving, and mat were cut to shape, wetted out with a brush or squeegee, and laid into the mold, one by one. This is known as hand-laid construction and it will be the default technique for the remainder of this book. Other methods of fiberglass construction, such as resin impregnation and vacuum bagging, will be discussed, but, for the avergage person, these methods are cost prohibitive.
As you can see, building a boat in this manner is like making a photocopy of a photocopy; fine details are sometimes lost, repairs are sometimes compounded, and the overall finished product can pay the price.
And that is just for the first boat built from the mold. Over time, the mold will get used again and again until either the production ends or the mold is retired. If the mold is retired, a new mold must be made from the initial plug. As you can imagine, the plug will begin to show signs of wear and tear with each successive mold.
This must also be repaired prior to the new mold being laid up. Now you have a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. This cycle continues on until the end of the production run. For this reason, no two boats, even from the same mold, are exactly alike. I think this is part of what appeals to me. The challenge in classic boat restoration is in getting it as close to the original plug, the original vision of the designer, as possible.
Perfection is unattainable. That line between perfect and imperfect is where art lives. It's where craftsmanship lives. Done well, it's something worth staring at for hours at a time.
Any boat more complicated than a canoe will require more than one mold. The hull and the deck will almost certainly be from two different molds. If there are more complex areas, additional molds may be required. Seats, splashwells, floorpans, stringers, and transoms may all have there own molds. In the end, they must all be tied together seamlessly for the finished boat to emerge. The name says it all with fiberglass. It is, at the most basic level, glass fibers that are saturated in resin.
Like rebar in concrete, when the resin cures, the glass fibers add tremendous strength to the mixture. The concept of reinforcing a hardened structure with fibrous strands dates back 3, to Egypt where ancient clay shards reveal the use of glass fibers to increase the strength of the pottery. Although the strands were crude and coarse by today's standards, the process for making strands of glass by hand would be refined for the next few thousand years.
Fibrous glass was used by many different cultures across the world in the next few millenia, but because of the difficult and labor intensive method of production, its use was limited to decorative purposes.
It's use as a reinforcement wouldn't be rediscovered until the nineteenth century. The world of glass fiber production leapt with both feet forward into the industrial age in , when a Frenchman named Dubus-Bonnel was issued a patent for using a loom to weave molten glass.
The method for producing fiberglass that we still use today happened, like most technological advances, by accident in A researcher for Corning Glass named Dale Kleist was trying to fuse together two glass blocks when an errant stream of compressed air hit the molten glass. The result was the same hair-thin strands found in modern fiberglass. Over the next few years, fiberglass would evolve into the product we know today.
In , Corning Glass and Owens-Illinois would merge to become Owens-Corning and lead the world in the production of fiberglass and fiberglass products. Initially, Owens Corning used fiberglass to make airplane parts for the war effort, but it was one of their own, a man named Ray Greene, who began experimenting with composite boat construction.
His first composite boat was in and he built the first modern fiberglass boat in After the war and for the next ten years, fiberglass came into wide acceptance, quickly usurping wood as the preferred material for boat construction.
In older boats, the fiberglass and resin cocktail was limited to three different weaves of fiberglass and one kind of resin. Boat builders would alternate between weaves for each layer and wet it out with a brush dipped in a jug of resin. It was a simple formula with no real options for deviation. They would keep adding layers of glass and more resin until the piece has reached the desired thickness.
Though it should be noted that Pearson Boats experimented, unsuccessfully, as early as with a form of vacuum bagging. Today our options are an embarrassment of riches and, at times, overwhelming. While the basic concept of fiberglass hasn't changed for the last sixty years, the choices of resins, glass, composites, and ancillary supplies have exploded in recent years. Before getting into the repair part of this section, it's important to understand what these options are and how they're used.
Fiberglass and Composite Materials. As mentioned above, classic fiberglass boats used only three different weaves in their construction. Today there are more options available.
Whether you choose to stick to traditional construction methods to keep your boat as authentic as possible or whether you choose to take advantage of the many improvements to the science and understanding of composite fabrics is entirely up to you.
Fiberglass cloth has the highest strength to weight ratio of all glass fiber fabrics. As far a glass goes, cloth is the strongest as compared to weight.
Cloth is the strongest compared to weight, but that doesn't mean that it's the strongest layer of fiberglass you can lay into a boat. No, that title goes to woven roving which is also considerbly heavier.
Yet, for some reason, probably because of the diminutive nature of the fabric, it is almost entirely used improperly. Fiberglass cloth excels as the stuctural core of a thin, yet strong laminated panel. Alternating between cloth and mat, this fabric will end up as a strong and light weight boat. Cloth, being a much lighter and drapier fabric, conforms to odd shapes much better than roving. One of the most common mistakes made, by both the boat builders of years past and the Do-It-Yourselfer of today, is wetting out fiberglass cloth, slapping onto a piece of wood, and believing this will prevent moisture from penetrating the surface.
This is about as effective as an umbrella made out of gauze. Fiberglass cloth is nearly pointless without being sandwiched between two layers of mat. The cloth is made up of thin strands of glass in alternating directions. The result is a strong fabric punctuated by a million little holes for water to penetrate. Mat is a mish mash of glass strands glued together to make sheet.
Sadly, I see this used improperly most of the time, usually resulting in costly repairs. It's essential that you understand its intended purpose and limitations. Mat, as I will continue to refer to it for the remainder of this book , is not intended to add strength to a fiberglass boat.
Many times I've seen the DIYer try to improve a structural aspect of his boat by adding a layer or two of mat. This is only slightly better than doing nothing at all. I will explain this statement in further detail in the subsequent descriptions of fiberglass fabrics, but for now, just know that mat is not structural.
First, because of it's overlapping multi-directional strands, it is the most waterproof of all the fiberglass fabrics. In other words, it's the layer of fiberglass that is closest to the exterior of the fiberglass lay up. If water should penetrate the gelcoat, you want the first layer of fiberglass it meets to be mat.
Second, mat conforms to shapes more easily than all other fabrics. This is a direct result of the glass fibers being only several inches long and multi-directional. These fibers are held in place by a binder that dissolves when it's wetted out with resin. Once the binder dissolves, the glass fibers will conform to whatever shape they are laying next to. Because cloth and woven roving are woven in alternating directions, they want to lie flat. When you try to convince them to turn a corner or conform to an irregular shape, they have a tendency to pull away from inside corners and lift up from outside corners.
When cloth or roving is sandwiched between two layers of mat, the mat is going to help convince them to stay where you want. Third, mat acts as a sort of gasket between layers of cloth or roving. When laying up layers of fiberglass, you never want to put a layer of cloth or roving directly on top of another layer of cloth or roving without a layer of mat between them.
Imagine the amount of surface area that would be in contact by pushing together two irregularly surfaced items such as two pieces of diamond plate. They will not touch except at the high points of each surface. Now throw a blanket in between them and you get almost complete surface contact. Mat is the blanket.
Woven roving is similar to cloth in that it is a woven fabric. Where fiberglass cloth looks like the kind of material you could feasibly make clothing out of very itchy clothing , roving looks more like wicker. It is far bulkier than cloth and, as a result of it's thickness, it is the single strongest layer you can lay up.
Roving is most often used in the super structure of a boat where thickness is most important, such as the hull, deck, and transom. Where cloth is the Popeye of boat building, roving is Bluto. Roving is also the hardest of the fabrics to get to conform neatly to complex shapes. Because it's made out of thick bundles of glass strands, it is best used for large flat or slightly curved areas. Bi-axial Glass. Woven fabrics have a downside. Like wicker, the weft and weave of the fabric must first go over one perpendicular strand, then under the next, then over, then under.
The result are glass fibers that do a lot of bending in order to make a fabric. At each bend; each hill and valley of the weave, the glass is stressed. At a microscopic scale, this causes some of the individual fibers to crack.
When this is compounded over the entirety of the surface, the result is an overall weakening of the fabric. Bi-axial glass is not woven. It is two separate layers of glass laid on top of each other that run in opposite directions.
The top layer is made of parallel strands of glass running 45 degrees to one side and the bottom layer is made up of parallel glass strands running 45 degrees to the other side. Instead of being interwoven, they are laid on top of each other and stitched together with a binding thread. On first glance, this sounds like it's a vast improvement over woven fabrics. In fact, it is stronger to some degree, but it is also much more expensive than cloth or roving.
But is it worth it? Side note: This is where people are going to come out of the woodwork to tell me I'm wrong. These next few paragraphs are considered blasphemy in the marine construction trades and I'm fully aware of it. I also want to stress, that the next few paragraphs are based on my interpretation of the science.
It is my opinion, not accepted fact. Do with that what you will. Bi-axial glass has good points and I do use it for a number of reasons. Strength is not one of them. The benefits of bi-axial cloth are, I believe, grossly overstated and, in some respects, simply non-existent or, in certain regards, detrimental.
The marketing behind bi-axial glass always trumpets two main factors, strength and finish. Strength because the glass is not compromised by having to bend up and down as woven fabrics do, and finish because, since the top layer lays flat, there is less of a three dimensional profile that needs to filled and faired in order to get a perfectly smooth surface to apply paint.
Here are my problems with bi-axial glass:. First, look closely at a swatch of bi-axial glass. Is it an even layer of glass strands laying perfectly flat on top of another layer of going in the opposite direction? No, it isn't. In fact, it's small bundles of glass laid next to each other all going in the same direction.
That's not the same thing. These small bundles of glass look about the same as a strand of woven roving. As I mentioned earlier, you can't laminate woven roving on top of woven roving without a layer of mat between them.
The reason being you don't get total surface contact between the layers. Bi-axial glass is comprised of two layers of the same thick glass strands running in opposite directions, but there is no binder between them. Because the alternating strands of woven fabrics are mechanically interlocked by the weave, they don't require a layer of mat between them. When bi-axial is wetted out, the two layers compress at the high points of each strand, but without a mechanical bond or a layer of mat between them, the structural improvements of straight glass strands are negated by an increased chance of delamination.
Second, the improved structural qualities of straight glass strands over glass that must bend in order to be woven are almost completely canceled out having to stitch a binding thread through the bi-axial fabric. Lastly, the benefits of a smoother finish are simply not true.
As you'll read later in this section, no woven or multi-directional fabric should ever be used as a finished layer. Mat should always be the first and last layer of a fiberglass lay up schedule because it is the least porous most waterproof. But even if that wasn't the case, the smoother finish of the unidirectional top layer of bi-axial glass is completely negated by the high profile of the binding thread.
Even if it dissolves in resin, the thread imparts a crimp to the strands which never disappears completely. On the whole, bi-axial glass is more about marketing than it is about real improvements to the marine composite world. It is two to three times more expensive to buy, yet costs the manufacturer roughly the same price to make. It is a much higher profit margin with only limited benefits to the end user.
So what are the actual benefits? I mentioned earlier that I do use bi-axial glass in some situations. Before I tell you how, I want to explain why. There are a couple of reasons, one of them is good and one of them is bad. The good reason: Bi-axial glass has much better shear strength than other weaves. What does this mean?
Boats twist. The front of the boat is pushed one direction while the back of the boat is pulled the other direction. This is called flex and it's a totally different thing than shearing. Flex is what leads to delamination. A hull flexes. A deck flexes. A floor flexes. These are all areas where the increased chance of delamination I associate with bi-axial glass would be a detriment. Shearing is the back and forth movement of two perpendicular pieces. Shearing occurs where the floor meets the hull.
Shearing occurs at intersections of opposing panels. Because of the opposing 45 degree angles of bi-axial glass, it resists shearing much better than the up and down, left and right strength of woven fabrics. I use bi-axial glass in lieu of cloth when tabbing in pieces to a boat, whether it's a floor, a bulkhead, or interior seating. The bad reason: As a professional, I have a vested interest in understanding the working properties of the materials I use. My customers do not.
I will try to explain my reasoning, but if a customer doesn't understand the mechanics of fiberglass, all he's going to hear is that I'm using a cheaper fabric. I can spend hours trying to explain myself, but if he doesn't get it, he's going to walk away thinking I'm trying to cut corners. If, after explaining myself, a customer insists, and I don't believe it's use will compromise the overall integrity of the boat, I will let him throw his money away.
When you purchase fiberglass fabric of any kind, you will need to know how to ask for what you want. Because nothing in the boating world is allowed to be either straight forward or simple, the rulers of the fiberglass kingdom have decreed that cloth and roving should be identified by their respective weights in square yards, and that fiberglass mat should be identified by its weight in square feet. This is the dumbest rule ever and leads to near total confusion for the uninitiated.
This is like going to a lumber yard and having the guy behind the counter tell you that teak is sold in board feet, but mahogany is only sold in meters. So when you go to your fiberglass supplier for the first time don't accuse the guy of trying to pull a fast one on you when your 1.
By the way, those weights are just about the industry standards for boat work. You will often have a choice of heavier or lighter fabrics, but for general use those are the numbers you would use. If you do require heavier or lighter fabric, just remember that they must all be heavier or lighter equally. In other words, wafer-thin mat 0.
You have to remember how fiberglass fabric is weighed in order to get a good resin to glass ratio. This means that if you are laying up one square yard of 3. If you have to wet out half a square yard of 24 oz roving, you'll need 12 oz of resin.
Mat is a little bit different. You have to use twice as much resin with mat. That means, if you have to wet out a square yard of 1. For a 2 to 1 ratio, you would then need 27 oz of resin to do the trick. When mixed with strands of glass, this becomes a durable construction material that, by weight, is stronger than steel. Early fiberglass boats were constructed almost exclusively of polyester resin and glass, and most production line boats are still made that way today.
Polyester is the most widely used and available resin on the market today. It is also the cheapest, and, not surprisingly, it is also the weakest, the most porous, and shrinks more than any other resin. I don't mean to give the impression that polyester resin is so far below the alternatives that it shouldn't be used.
If that were the case then this book wouldn't exist. I think it's a testament to the qualities of polyester resin that, fifty years later, the fiberglass portions of the boats we choose to restore are still the strongest element left. The following excerpt was taken from Wikipedia. If you understand it, please call me and explain it to me using simple words. Typical polyols used are glycols such as ethylene glycol; acids used are phthalic acid and maleic acid.
Water, a by-product of esterification reactions, is continuously removed, driving the reaction to completion.
The use of unsaturated polyesters and additives such as styrene lowers the viscosity of the resin. The initially liquid resin is converted to a solid by cross linking chains.
This is done by creating free radicals at unsaturated bonds, which propagate in a chain reaction to other unsaturated bonds in adjacent molecules, linking them in the process.
The initial free radicals are induced by adding a compound that easily decomposes into free radicals. This compound is usually and incorrectly known as the catalyst. Substances used are generally organic peroxides such as benzoyl peroxide. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't know what that means.
I've tried to understand it, but the more I try, the more I want to slam my head into a wall until I'm unconscious. This is one of those things where I don't know what I don't know, and I don't care. This is what I do know. Not all polyester resins are equal.
The stuff you buy at the auto parts store is not the same stuff that's intended for use on boats, you will find this to be a recurring theme in this book. There are two different kinds of polyester resin: Orthophthalic and Isophthalic. If you want to have some fun, go into an auto parts store and ask the guy behind the counter if his polyester resin is orthophthalic or isophthalic. It's up to you to know the difference.
Isophthalic resin was used on most boats prior to the 70s. In the 70s and 80s, really the finest time in American History for giving us all forms of polyester, pet rocks, and disco , the move was made to orthophthalic resin. Not because it was better, but because it was cheaper and easier to use. Ten years later, repairing the blisters caused by the inferior resin became a cottage industry.
It turned out that isophthalic resin was much more solvent resistant. Water, it seems, is an excellent solvent.
The water would degrade the resin and penetrate, first the gelcoat, then the layers of glass behind it, resulting in osmotic blisters, colloquially known as boat pox. Once it was discovered that inferior resin was the culprit, most of the industry shifted back to isophthalic resin. Some went in other directions Today, polyester resin is commonplace.
It can be found at local hardware stores, big box stores, marine chandleries, and auto parts stores. It is the basis for most marine and automotive fillers and fairing compounds, and it's easily used. The advantages of polyesters over other types of resins are that it's easy to find and, because it is cheaper than it's counterparts, it lends itself to the home user as a product that won't break the bank if you screw it up.
It also has an advantage over epoxy in that it's cure time can be sped up or slowed down by adjusting the amount of catalyst used. Epoxy is widely viewed as the more talented younger brother to polyester resin. It is stronger and more water resistant. It is chemically compatible for repairs to polyester based construction and, when mixed with any of a wide variety of fillers, it makes an excellent adhesive, filler, or fairing compound. It is also compatible with many other substrates used in the marine industry such as steel, aluminum, and wood.
At about the same time as the polyester resin revolution was just gathering steam, epoxies were also quietly building momentum. In , a Russian organic chemist named Nikolia Prileschajev Prilezhaev discovered a method for epoxidation. Epoxidation is, simply put, the joining of an oxygen atom to two other atoms that are already joined. The now obvious implication of this process was that a viscous resin could could be molecularly altered to turn into a hardened solid. While epoxidation occurs in nature, the ability to replicate the Prileschajev Reaction, as it came to be known, in a lab would not be done successfully for decades.
In , Dr. Pierre Castan of Switzerland and Dr. Greenlee of the United States, almost simultaneously, and who share equal credit for the discovery , were able to successfully synthesize epoxidation. Castan's research was done for the Swiss company, Ciba, Ltd. In the years that followed, epoxy gained notoriety as an excellent adhesive that was capable of bonding to wood, steel, aluminum, fiberglass, and many other materials.
It had gained a niche market in the boating world as a superior adhesive for wooden boat construction. But it hadn't gained wide acceptance as a laminating resin because of expense and it's limitations as a coating.
By all accounts, the Gougeon brothers, Jan and Meade, revolutionized the world of epoxy by starting West Systems. Although the company wasn't founded until the s, The Gougeon brothers had been working and experimenting with epoxies since the late s. It was their work that brought a workable, easily used epoxy to the mainstream of boat construction and repair. Today, the epoxy industry has evolved into a competitive world that is increasingly user friendly, price-conscious, and adaptable.
Epoxies are now customized for specific purposes, from laminating fiberglass to below-the-waterline barrier coatings to finished surfaces. While epoxy is a windfall for the marine industry, it is not without its drawbacks. The two most glaringly obvious are: Its price, it is still the most expensive of the choices available for resins, and its limitations for use with other resins. Specifically, epoxy will adhere like a dug-in tick to all other cured resins, but other resins don't adhere well to cured epoxy.
Other drawbacks include shrinkage � while polyester shrinks the most in the curing process, epoxy is not far behind � and cure times. Polyester resin cure times can be accelerated or retarded depending on the amount of catalyst added, but epoxies require exact mixing ratios of resin to hardener.
To alter the cure time of epoxy, it's necessary to buy a faster or slower hardener. Finally, epoxies, like a professional athlete with a nagging hamstring injury, are handicapped by amine blush; an annoying byproduct of all epoxies, but it's most noticeable in cheaper epoxies and with some slower hardeners.
Amine blush is a waxy hazy film that develops when curing epoxy is exposed to moisture or humidity. In extreme cases, it can cause the the surface to become a milky white and chalky, but even if you don't see it, it's there. This means that cured epoxy must be cleaned either with soap and water or, in extreme cases, by sanding and solvent wiping, before the epoxy can be coated, either with a finish or with more fiberglass. I'm going to start this with a baseball analogy for two reasons; first, I like baseball and it pleases me, second, I've found that baseball works as an analogy for everything.
Polyester is the utility infielder of the boat building world; good at most things, but not great at any, but still able to be had for a decent price. Epoxy, on the other hand, is the Ichiro or Ken Griffey Jr. New York and Boston can bite me.
In other words, epoxy is the star; expensive and worth it. It puts up the big numbers, it leads the league in hits and home runs. Vinylester is the finesse player. Vinylester is the Greg Maddux of resins. Unimposing to look at, yet, day after day, year after year, it quietly wins every game until, at the end of it's career, you look back and realize it's going into the Hall of Fame.
Undervalued, under reported, and underestimated, vinylester is the inexpensive best of both worlds. The name implies that it is closely related to polyester resin. For the purposes of the amateur boat restorer, it is. It is catalyzed the same as polyester, it's chemically compatible with polyester, and the cure time can be adjusted like polyester.
It has all of the good points of polyester, but few of the drawbacks. It is more waterproof, It shrinks less than both polyester and epoxy, and it is relatively inexpensive. Technically, it is a hybrid of polyester and epoxy.
I'm hesitant to say that because, even though it's true, it might give the reader the mistaken impression that it is equally compatible with both.
It's not. Like polyester, epoxy will adhere very well to it, but it doesn't adhere very well to epoxy. As far as I'm concerned, this drawback is grossly outweighed by its advantages. Vinylester resin finds its roots in the aftermath of the osmotic blistering age.
The boat building world was looking for both the cause and the solution to the problem. Vinylester resin was experimented with as a barrier coat between the porous gelcoat and first layers of fiberglass behind it, and it did so with great success. Because it is still, and always was, moderately more expensive than polyester resins, it's use as the primary resin for fiberglass lamination didn't catch on with the mass-production builders.
These days, vinylester built boats are considered to be a mark of high quality, and rightfully so. With a price that is far below most epoxies, I believe this is the best resin available for at-home boat restoration. Ultimately, the resin you choose to use is going to be based on your comfort level, your pocketbook, availability, and whimsy. Fiberglass Fabrication. I wasn't sure whether or not to add this section to the book because fiberglass fabrication as opposed to repair is generally not associated with boat restoration, but after serious thought, I decided its omission would close the doors to an entire subset of creativity.
Before I start talking about how to build something new, I want to clarify what I meant by that last paragraph. It's certainly important to know how to fabricate new pieces for an incomplete boat. It's also important to know how replace pieces that are so badly damaged that repair is not an option. Those two situations alone are reason enough to add this section. But there is another reason. A reason that goes largely untalked about. A reason that is looked upon with disdain by many and as sacrilege by some.
That reason is customization. There are some boats that are considered untouchable. The Glass Slipper, the Lonestar Meteor, the Bell Boy Banshee, the Herter's Flying Fish, and many others in the eyes of their followers; these are boats that would inspire anger bordering on violence if we were to come across one that had been defiled by an amateur who decided to completely alter the original intent of the designer.
Then there are the others. I'm not going to name names because to mention a specific boat would inevitably piss someone off, but we've all seen them. A fifty year old derelict sitting in someone's back yard, for sale for a hundred bucks. These boats don't have the cult-like following. They may not have the tail fins or the unique hardware or the headlights or the These boats are cheap and neglected because they weren't blessed with a creative designer. But does that mean these boats should be relegated to the scrap heap?
Does that mean these boats aren't worthy of restoration? Absolutely not. The customization of classic cars using whatever materials are laying around the shop have come to be known as Rat Rods.
Sometimes the customization is necessary because the vehicle is too far gone to repair. Sometimes it's because the artist, and I do consider them art , doesn't have the money to restore them properly.
And sometimes it's because it's just fun to see what you can make from nothing. Regardless of the reason, whether by necessity or by creativity, without them, the world is a duller place. Without the artistic eye of a man on a budget, our roads would be limited to a sea of indistinguishable sedans and SUVs. Love them or hate them, we always notice them. But for some reason, that creativity has gone largely ignored by its marine counterparts.
I, for one, would love to see more customized, one of a kind entries into the classic boat world. In fact, I find it ironic that the things we love most about Glassic boats; their originality, their wild divergence from the accepted norms of nautical history, is so closely bound by an unwillingness to take design risks in their restoration.
If we, as a group, don't move beyond the hoarding mentality, then we've betrayed their spirits, they might as well be animals in a zoo. To be clear, I have a Bell Boy Banshee. I love it. I think it's perfect. I wouldn't change a thing about it. But everyday, I see disregarded featureless boat offered virtually for free. I never pass by one without thinking, I could make that boat sing.
I could make that thing the wildest boat anyone has ever seen. I could make that boat look like a cartoon, and the only detriment to the world would be one less boat in a landfill. So, while this section is necessary for some who need to learn how to restore their boat to its original condition, it is my sincere hope that some who read this will be inspired to take a risk and create their own masterpiece.
Making Plugs and Molds. It is not always necessary to make a plug or a mold when fabricating new construction. Typically, they are used for production runs of more than one piece. However, building a plug or mold is both an educational experience and a gratifying accomplishment.
While this was quickly covered in the introduction, I'll go into more depth here and try to help the reader from making some of the more common mistakes. It may be pedestrian, but it's important to note the difference between a plug and a mold. Both are simply a negative shape, the inverse of the piece you want to make. A plug is used to lay up fiberglass on the outside of the shape and a mold is used to lay up fiberglass on the inside of the shape. It can be structurally solid, as when used for long production runs, or it can be built for a single use.
It is up to the reader to decide for himself how sturdy or how flimsy a mold needs to be. First, a plug or mold doesn't need to be built like they do in the factories.
It can be cardboard, it can be Tupperware, it can be a bowling ball, it can be plywood, a tee-shirt, your wife's fine china, your kid's iPod, a solid block of wood, or made from an existing piece that you want to duplicate. It can be made out of whatever is available that will create the shape you choose.
For the purposes of this section, I'm going to pretend that we're making both a plug and a mold for a battery box. It's a simple shape and easily described.
But now matter how complex your mold or plug may be, the process doesn't change. Whether you're making flat panel or a fiberglass representation of the Chrysler Building, the steps remain the same. For our battery box, obviously we need to know how big to make it.
This isn't quite as simple as measuring the battery and building a box that will accommodate it. We have to take into account the thickness of the final product.
If our finished battery box is going to be made out of a quarter inch thick fiberglass then we have to alter the dimensions of our plug or mold to take that into account.
If we are making a plug, then we have to build it to the inside dimensions of the finished box because the box will be built from the inside out. If we're making a mold, we have to build it to outside dimensions because it will be built from the outside in. Since deep-cycle marine batteries are very difficult to make smaller, you probably want to get this right the first time.
Which is poppycock.. Provided all other factors are held equal � namely, that resins with equivalent post-cure mechanical properties are used in both cases, and very similar types, quantities, and placement of reinforcing materials are employed � a hand-laid laminate will be very close in strength to that of its vacuum infused version. Whoa, you say, how can that be? Why do so many builders extol the virtues of their vacuum infused laminates? That works well for homogeneous materials such as steel and aluminum.
But fiberglass laminate is a composite material made up of glass or other reinforcing fiber encased in a polymer resin matrix. So understanding the comparative strengths of various different laminates is a lot more complicated.
Let me explain. The absolute tensile and bending strengths of an FRP laminate depends almost entirely on the strength, quantity, and type of the contained glass or other fibers and their orientation in the cured final product. So if two almost identical hulls are laid up, one call it Hull A using hand-lay techniques and the other call it Hull B using vacuum infusion procedures, with identical configurations of fiber reinforcing, hull A will end up with more resin in its cured laminate than hull B.
Consequently, hull A will be not only a bit heavier, but somewhat thicker. But since A has more cross-sectional area because it is thicker than B, the two end up having the same strength when considered on an absolute basis.
So then, you ask, what is the big deal and why all the touting of vacuum infusion over hand lay-up? The big deal is that good infused laminates generally achieve the same strength at less weight than an equally good hand lay-up. And in yachts, you will remember, weight reduction almost always makes a difference to performance and range. The other plus on the infusion side of the ledger is that vacuum infused laminates commonly exhibit more uniformity and predictability than hand-laid laminates, in terms of their post-cured mechanical properties.
And uniformity and predictability are key elements in being able to more accurately engineer the structures built up of those laminates. Read more articles from Phil Friedman:. View Article.
Annapolis Harbor First St. Execution Is King The basic fact to keep in mind is that the choice of a laminating technique is not, in and by itself, as important as the ultimately achieved quality of the manufactured product. Hand Lay-Up Hand lay-up involves placing pieces of precut reinforcing fabric into the female tool or mold and saturating them with catalyzed or co-reacted liquid polymer � polyester, vinyl ester, or epoxy resin. Busting a Common Myth A commonly misconception abounds that hand-laid laminates are necessarily inferior in strength to infused laminates.
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