Fer-A-Lite

[darr]

Originally Posted by pdwiley

So you'd be happy with a length of pipe made out of 304 when the spec called for Inconel then?

PDW

The point being that while the design called for Inconel not 304, if the pipe is busted, water coming in, put the 304 on it till you get to the surface, some bright young engineer would probably sink the ship while arguing why you should not use it.

On the technology side of the company, nothing to do with boats, I make my living correcting issues that bright young engineers dream up on a daily basis.

I also over the years have found myself disproving things. A couple of bright young RF engineers from Motorola told me in 1991 that I would never get mobile data working over an 800 Mhz trunked radio system.

If you look in the October issue that year of Communications Magazine you will find that we in fact did make it work, and it was credited with saving the life of Memphis PD officer its first night active.

Of course there was also the argument with the Motorola engineer later that year that they were going to get 6 digital channels from each analog channel, told them fat chance, to the best of my knowledge to date the system still only gets a 3 to 1 conversion.

And of course history really proves it, the popular bright young engineers of the time were convinced that the world was flat and the sun rotated around the earth, because the numbers and observations of the time proved it.

Thank goodness for those radicals like Columbus and such.

Yep, bright young engineers, gotta love em.

[SportyDog]

Seems some one is upset downunder, wonder where he learned "Scientific Method". Common Sense was always a good way to go fo me. First of all I never claimed to be an scientist, and I am not sure you are. I am intitled to own any of my personal facts, like it or not.

[MikeJohns]

Originally Posted by darr

Ah Mike,

Most importantly during my nuclear training I was taught to look at the big picture and not get lost in the details.

Originally Posted by darr

.........
I am someone who has had over 37 years of experience in various high end technology fields.

I cut my teeth in nuclear ..engineering, my education was provided by the US Navy nuclear power program.............. I understand technical issues far better than you appear to believe. ..........

Originally Posted by darr

............I make my living correcting issues that bright young engineers dream up on a daily basis..........

You implied you had a high level of technical knowledge but it's clearly not true. You are showing something close to complete ignorance of basic engineering principles.

For a salesman promoting a boat-building material on the worlds leading boat design forum you should do better otherwise you shoot yourself in the foot.

You cannot put any spin on that. And remember this all goes on the record.

Now what about the 70% of the boats you don't know about ? I think 'Tugboat' needs to actually think about this. He's clearly been mislead by the figures and facts he was quoting for ferralight.

[pdwiley]

Originally Posted by tugboat

PDW--you make good points...I just gotta say - science and its methods are fallible...i get where your coming from--you want to see something tangible to go on as a guide..(if i m not mistaken)... but dont you think thats overcomplexifying things??...

Actually I don't. Scientific method isn't fallible in the sense that you seem to imply. It's a process. You make some observations, then come up with an explanation, then figure out to test your explanation, then if the test fails to invalidate, you tentatively accept the explanation pending further contradictory data. You provide sufficient information so that someone else can do the same experiment and (hopefully) come to the same conclusion. If they can't do that, there's something wrong somewhere and you go looking for why. The key s, nothing is ever taken on faith. You attempt to falsify your explanation and if you can't, you accept it as correct within the limits of the test. Newtonian physics for example is a subset of Einsteinian physics. New data led to the old theory not being able to explain observations, new theory explains both old data & new data, on it goes. I studied the history & philosophy of science as part of my first undergraduate science degree.

Science & its methods laid the foundation for pretty much everything you see & use in the modern world. Engineering is responsible for the screw-ups (under pressure from marketing to cut costs & delivery times......)

The 'suck it & see' approach has a lot of validity too. It's fine for experiments, prototypes and the like. Not for engineering.

First you prove things in the lab. If the properties look interesting then you see if it's toxic or similar, if it can be economically manufactured. Then you build some 'proof of concept' structures. History is all very well & good but Darr says the formulation has changed so really you can't compare something built 30 years ago with something you'll build today unless you re-test the product to see that it's structural properties haven't changed.

Another thing I've picked up - Darr's few claims about structural properties are based on the composite of FAL and wire plank. Fine except his Web site says that wire plank isn't available right now. There goes the matrix that contributed the structural strength, you need to use something else. Now will chicken wire give the equivalent strength or do you need some high tensile steel alloy, if so what alloy, what wire thickness, woven or welded, what orientation etc - or these days would Spectra or something else be better? Nobody knows because nobody has tried and all Darr has to say is, hey, it seemed to work 30+ years ago and I'm not going to do any tests, I'll just sell it to home builders who have faith.

Originally Posted by tugboat

off topic- i dont remember if I got the dimensions of that boat your plating up? is she a forty footer??

11.8m LOD, 3m beam, 1.2m draft. 17 of 65x6 flat bar frames, 32x6 flat bar longitudinals on 300mm spacing, 4mm plate for both hull & deck. Displaces approx 7.5 tonnes.

Pouring rain outside and I've run out of excuses to not get back to the plating so have fun...

PDW

[darr]

Originally Posted by MikeJohns

You implied you had a high level of technical knowledge but it's clearly not true. You are showing something close to complete ignorance of basic engineering principles.

For a salesman promoting a boat-building material on the worlds leading boat design forum you should do better otherwise you shoot yourself in the foot.

You cannot put any spin on that. And remember this all goes on the record.

Now what about the 70% of the boats you don't know about ? I think 'Tugboat' needs to actually think about this. He's clearly been mislead by the figures and facts he was quoting for ferralight.

Professional in most cases, but not in all, and the term world's leading I do not believe has any basis for fact.

In fact many of the forums most vocal contributors refuse to share their bona fides so to speak.

Now there are a great number of highly qualified individuals here, most I respect and take guidance from, but then there are those....

Once again, I am anything but a salesman. I have still to date never solicited the sale of any material with the exception of the original posts back when I first bought the manufacturing plant from Platt.

Your stance on the 70% we don't know about makes no sense. Yes they could all be gone, but I doubt it, or they could all be happily sailing around the planet, which is more than likely.

Regardless of the way that you and your cohorts try to twist and spin failings into the product, we will continue to stand behind the claims and proven real time data on the material.

Be careful now and don't sail off the edge of the earth.

[darr]

Actually Tugboat is aware of the wire plank, that we do have a limited supply, however economics of freight comes into play. The tensile strength specifications and dimensions are on the website as well.

That being said, many many boats were built without wireplank, in fact more were built without it than were built with it.

And your statement regarding that invalidating the stated strength is not true as the sample used in the test by General Testing Laboratories did not use wire plank, but instead used a matrix similar to what Tugboat is planning to use.

Something else, Platt spent 6 years and performed many many experiments while developing the material, it has performed well in every case I have inspected so I am not going to go back and reengineer the wheel so to speak.

I do wish everyone would look at all the facts before they start making comments and assumptions.

In fact everything I have heard from this site is based purely on conjecture and assumptions that do not take into account all the facts. Nor any first hand experience with the material.

And Mike before you jump back with the fact that you surveyed the Adams 50 hull on the hard does not mean you have first hand experience. It means you may have surveyed a boat that may or may not have been properly built, and since you have no first hand experience with the material, you are not even qualified to make that statement.

Originally Posted by tugboat

i suspect you can't tell me -you dont know- or you know im going to refute it....so how can you say you know better than i do about other materials???
i have yet to see on any post you have added ANYWHERE that had specific reasons why things wont work..not one...

No tugboat, I will not go into deep on these things.

It is just not worth argueing with someone who does not know the stuff he is talking about.
Your statements about modern wood building methods for example, are completely besides the facts. Wood epoxy is stronger, lasts longer, has less maintenance issues, than FRP for example. Always assumed both boats are build to the best standards, of course. And I am building in FRP as well as in wood ep, so, I would say I have at least a clue after some 35 years. (yeah I did metal too)

And your rant about my contribution to this board, is another point to make it senseless (or at least unenjoyable) to go deeper into any topic with you.
There are quite many threads here where other members have the opposite opinion.

over and out.

[darr]

Has anyone noticed that this site may be leading to alzheimers or some other form of dementia among the members.

I keep seeing folks say that they are out of here.

Yet they come back.

[pdwiley]

Originally Posted by darr

The point being that while the design called for Inconel not 304, if the pipe is busted, water coming in, put the 304 on it till you get to the surface, some bright young engineer would probably sink the ship while arguing why you should not use it.

You are talking about a field-expedient repair which is a totally different thing to product substitution on a new build. Are you really this confused?

If your nuclear plant called for Inconel in a pipe, as part of the original build, would you substitute 304? If so, why? If not, why not?

PDW

[SportyDog]

Some years ago 1978, while working at the Annapolis Sailboat Show, (I was a dealer selling Morgan Yachts, Platt was there showing his wares.) We met a young man by the name of Reid Stowe. We became friends along with his family. Later visited him in North Carolina. he was building a 70' Schooner. What a project! Have not heard or seen him in many years, so I don't know what he is doing now. He did have a web site "One Thousand Days At Sea", check it out. He too used Fer-A-Lite & WirePlank.

[pdwiley]

Originally Posted by darr

Has anyone noticed that this site may be leading to alzheimers or some other form of dementia among the members.

I keep seeing folks say that they are out of here.

Yet they come back.

I've given up on the design threads because I've no real interest in tug boats and the topic went away from steel construction.

Here we're discussing materials. Well, we're trying to but you won't post any engineering data on yours. Do you want me to re-post the specifications for A36 so you can put your numbers next to their equivalents?

So far, from your own postings, it seems that you've bought the rights to manufacture a 30+ y/o product and the only test data that you have is for the 30+ y/o product as then formulated. Meantime, there's been ingredient substitution and you've no test data on what that substitution has done to the original material properties.

Is that an accurate summary of the state of play? If not, what have I got wrong?

PDW

[pdwiley]

Originally Posted by darr

Regardless of the way that you and your cohorts try to twist and spin failings into the product, we will continue to stand behind the claims and proven real time data on the material.

I am not trying to spin failings into the product, I am simply asking for the same information I can readily get on products that you claim are inferior to what you are selling.

You haven't made any claims that stand up except that some 30% of boats built 30+ years ago are still afloat & sailing. As I keep saying, you tell us that the product formulation has changed, you have done no testing to show that the new formulation has the same properties as the old one, so even that figure of 30% comes to 'so what'?

This is exasperating because if you actually were an engineer and actually had any background in specification of materials you'd understand why I and others are concerned about claims without evidence. You could do some really simple tests like make up some sections and use a cheap 10 tonne porta-power unit with pressure gauge and a simple welded test frame to test those samples to destruction alongside a piece of 5085 and A36 steel. A tensile test, a compression test and a shear test would be pretty simple to do. It wouldn't cost you much if anything, you could video the setup and post it on YouTube so we could see how you did it, and you could post the numbers. This wouldn't involve paying a UL or NATA or equivalent certified lab and there would be some numbers to play with. Yet you don't do something even this straightforward. Why not?

PDW

[darr]

Originally Posted by pdwiley

I've given up on the design threads because I've no real interest in tug boats and the topic went away from steel construction.

Here we're discussing materials. Well, we're trying to but you won't post any engineering data on yours. Do you want me to re-post the specifications for A36 so you can put your numbers next to their equivalents?

So far, from your own postings, it seems that you've bought the rights to manufacture a 30+ y/o product and the only test data that you have is for the 30+ y/o product as then formulated. Meantime, there's been ingredient substitution and you've no test data on what that substitution has done to the original material properties.

Is that an accurate summary of the state of play? If not, what have I got wrong?

PDW

Completely wrong,

There has been no ingredient substitution. READ very CAREFULLY the previous post. One of the components that had previously been listed on the asbestos or asbestos containing product list was removed from the revised list, not substituted in the product.

We still use the exact same manufacturers products (Thankfully) in the exact same proportions and methods and produce the blend in the very same piece of equipment that has always produced it.

The original list was produced as a knee jerk reaction and it improperly listed hundreds of materials and products incorrectly as having asbestos. After many lawsuits by various manufacturers and consumer groups they went back and tested and removed those that did not contain asbestos.

The alzheimers comment was directed at someone else, I did not catch that you had left the other thread. So don't go back to that thread or it may prove my theory

[pdwiley]

Originally Posted by darr

And of course history really proves it, the popular bright young engineers of the time were convinced that the world was flat and the sun rotated around the earth, because the numbers and observations of the time proved it.

Thank goodness for those radicals like Columbus and such.

Yep, bright young engineers, gotta love em.

Missed this the first time.

You have just demonstrated such a profound lack of knowledge of history and science that it's truly astonishing. The funny side is, you don't even realise what you don't know.

Hint: google Galileo.

PDW

[darr]

Originally Posted by pdwiley

I am not trying to spin failings into the product, I am simply asking for the same information I can readily get on products that you claim are inferior to what you are selling.

You haven't made any claims that stand up except that some 30% of boats built 30+ years ago are still afloat & sailing. As I keep saying, you tell us that the product formulation has changed, you have done no testing to show that the new formulation has the same properties as the old one, so even that figure of 30% comes to 'so what'?

This is exasperating because if you actually were an engineer and actually had any background in specification of materials you'd understand why I and others are concerned about claims without evidence. You could do some really simple tests like make up some sections and use a cheap 10 tonne porta-power unit with pressure gauge and a simple welded test frame to test those samples to destruction alongside a piece of 5085 and A36 steel. A tensile test, a compression test and a shear test would be pretty simple to do. It wouldn't cost you much if anything, you could video the setup and post it on YouTube so we could see how you did it, and you could post the numbers. This wouldn't involve paying a UL or NATA or equivalent certified lab and there would be some numbers to play with. Yet you don't do something even this straightforward. Why not?

PDW

Once again, Platt went through all of that when he initially developed the process. We have some of the data, but certainly not all of it.

What we do have that you keep refusing to see is several healthy examples of the material in the use that it was designed for and that has been in use for over 30 years. Oh yes, and one potential bad example that may in fact be a failing of the builder not the material

Show me a large government or commercial contract that would make jumping through the hoops worthwhile and I might consider having the necessary tests performed.

The material and process was never intended for commercial or mass production, what part of that seems to escape everyone.

Look, frankly I am not looking for yours or anyone else's acceptance of the material in the commercial boat building industry, so in fact the onus is on you to do the research if you for what ever reason want to consider it.

But at the same time, no one who does not have first had experience with it should be making statements based on assumptions that are unfounded.