Epoxy decision?

Categories: Materials
Are we really going with West Systems?? Unless I find something that looks better, it might end up going that way. I still have some more research to do with MAS and System Three. Cost savings is HUGE for ordering a large quantity of resin and hardener (like almost a grand! that’s a nice sail right there). So I think we’re going to bite the bullet and get a bigass drum of epoxy and pump it out into smaller (5ish gal) containers to use.

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Sending out bid requests

Categories: Materials Misc Boat
Sent out a few e-mails this morning for price bids on large drums of West epoxy/hardener and CoreCell. Sent e-mail to a few “retail” mail-order places as well, just to see if they can come close to a few places that I’ve found, or if maybe the price comes down from less freight charges.

Basic material research

Categories: Materials Misc Boat
We’ve decided to use CoreCell brand foam for the boat construction. It was a very close (and difficult) debate between that and the less-expensive DivinyCell – both posessing amazing qualities with few bad points. From the research I’ve done, it appears that CoreCell is easier to thermo-form, has much better impact resistance (pdf) but seems to burn at a faster rate than others. Still unsure on the high-density insert material to use – CoreCell makes one, but it’s damned expensive (over $300 for a 3×6 sheet!

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