Brutal sanding job!

Correct.

 

West System is available at West Marine, though bring your purse, even with the port discount.

 

How well is "Obamacare" bedding in ? When you reckon with the fact that health and medical expenditures in the USA are twice that of other advanced countries, as a proportion of the economy, something is horribly wrong with that system, especially as the outcomes are no better than elsewhere. Sounds like an ugly alliance of medical providers and insurers preying on the public for too long.

 

Yaaay - a metric bun fight - can I have a go ??? ( in the spirit of fun of course )


This is the first time I have ever seen the English Imperial System held up as a reason for engineering superiority. Maybe if the US has converted to Metric, we would have colonies on the moon by now. As it is, the Chinese will be up there long before the US gets back. how about the ignominy that the US cant get its astronauts to the space station any more because they don't have suitable vehicles.


Oh, and about those stealth fighters - we have had some on order for Australia


" The program was delayed by more than two years because of chronic weight, software and design problems. Between 2002 and 2010, its asking price soared from initial estimates of about $US50 million a plane to $US250m a plane, before coming back down to about $US110m a plane in today's dollars."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...hard-work-begins/story-e6frg8yo-1226728836238







United States does not commonly mandate the use of SI, making it, according to the CIA Factbook, one of three countries that has not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures, along with Burma and Liberia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States




Amongst the day to day costs of inefficiencies ,comes the obvious major stuff-ups.

Mars orbiter
(CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units

"The use of two different unit systems was the cause of the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998. NASA specified metric units in the contract. NASA and other organizations applied metric units in their work, but one subcontractor, Lockheed Martin, provided thruster performance data to the team in pound force seconds instead of newton seconds. The spacecraft was intended to orbit Mars at about 150 kilometers (93 mi) altitude, but incorrect data probably caused it to descend instead to about 57 kilometers (35 mi), burning up in the Martian atmosphere."
http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/

 

Burma and Liberia eh, were in good company, wait a minute, isn't Liberia a country made up of repatriated American slaves?

 

China is about a half a century behind the USA in advanced technology, most of which they're stolen anyway. Don't hold your breath on their moon landings, because eventually their "playing" (manipulation) with the value of their yuan, will catch up with them. In fact, this trend has kept them in the back seat on the world stage, as a serious economic entity, in spite of their size.

The ACA has and will work out. If you pay attention the the facts and not the Fox News reports, which blatantly ignore and distort these facts, you'll find all the derogatory hype is less than warranted. With the appropriate adjustments, much like those done on every single large program after inception, it'll do better than expected and in fact exceeded expectations last month, with numbers signing up.

You mean the space station we built? It may be called the ISS, but you should look at the tonnage hoisted up, by whom, assembled on site by whom and the costs associated with it and footed by whom.

Sending things to Mars has been as you'd expect, for something this difficult. Currently there's about a 50% success rate, which isn't all that bad, considering. Failures are to be expected and though it would be nice for a higher win/lose ratio, it's not unexpected and these failures have been for many reasons. The primary and overwhelming reason for failure thus far, has been communication loses in route and interestingly enough, mostly on other country's space craft, not the USA's. The Soviet's lost a bunch of them.

 

Yup Interprotect is the industry standard.

A typical bottom job on a non osmosis glass boat would be

Sandblast all old coatings off....dust off, coat with epoxy resin, wait for epoxy to reach green stage then fill blasting texture and imperfections by skimming the entire bottom with epoxy fairing compound...if you are a single hander epoxy seal and fill one side at a time.

sand fairing compound skimmed bottom with a random orbital...

apply one coat interprotect .....

again fill visible imperfections with fairing compound while interprotect is green... sand cured fairing and interprotect with random orbital.....

apply 3 to five coats of interpotect then antifoul.

Primer coverage is quoted in mill film thickness. Its critical to generate the correct film thickness. Interprotect is very high solids and fast dry.....hard to give a nice roll coat. Add a bit of thinner to the interprtect to slow dry time aid application.



When using interprotect or any green on green no sand techniques do not allow the surface to become contaminated. When working outside this means morning dew or rain running down the topside and contaminating the bottom

 

You can also try Tuff Stuff from Sea Hawk paints. They are based in Clearwater and are the only 100% US bottom paint company. All materials are US. 1-800-528-0997 call them and ask for one of their reps to check out the boat.

 

On a non osmosis glass boat I would avoid sandblasting for a less destructive method for old paint removal, such as baking soda or plastic media blasting, sand blasting is appropriate for boats with osmosis. Interprotect has become the industry standard, not because its the best barrier, its clearly not, but because it has been heavily marketed by one of the largest companies in the industry and because it is the easiest product to use so it makes a brutal job less so and this is important. There is however no free lunch, when you add fillers to make it sand easier and solvents to make it fast drying you give up something which of course is why you need a real barrier of straight epoxy as a first line of defense where raw glass is involved. It bothers me when I see boatowners as well as yards blindly sanding the bottom and rolling on 3 coats of interprotect and believing they have barrier coated it. Of course if the boat had no osmosis it most likely was not going to get it anyway so they could have used just about anything.

Steve.

 

Steve has hit on several important points. You have to do the leg work, if you want a good product or set of procedures. Don't buy the hype, do the research and use the best products and/or procedures your budget will permit.

 

My vessel has no blisters/osmosis. Should I leave what's left of the bottom gelcoat on and just roll those 2 layers of straight epoxy resin over that? ...(again, it's gouged in many areas down to bare fiberglass)

Also, Steve mentioned that Interprotect is not the best barrier. Which other product(s) do you recommend for a barrier coat instead?

Chris

 

As long as you have no osmosis there is no reason to remove the gelcoat, a lot of work for no gain. Treat the gouged areas individually by feathering out and sealing with straight epoxy, when it has reached the tacky stage, fill with thickened epoxy. Sand fair, refill as needed until you are satisfied, then wash, dry, solvent wipe then two or three coats of epoxy followed by two or three coats of interprotect followed by the bottom paint, all wet on wet. The 100% solids is the barrier coat, the interprotect is the primer. Now if you were after a racing bottom you would need to have more coats and do some long boarding before bottom paint.
Back in the days, pre West systems and pre interprotect, Epiglass had two different laminating epoxies, Epiglass 90 (clear) and Epiglass rapid 90 which was white pigmented 100% solids epoxy which we used as the primer.

Steve.

 

what bit don't you guys understand?

Interprotect isn't the barrier?????

No.

NO

NOO.

Epoxy is the resin you use to seal the open glass structure ie after blasting/grinding. It is debatable if this is necessary. (it depends on the solvent susceptiblilty of the glass/resin matrix)

If you have gelcoat you don't need resin.

After this you use something called a barrier coat...primer...resin...paint...sticky stuff...john...peter...whatever

Use resin, paint. Not my problem. But factually, Interprotect will be the best barrier coat you can buy, easily.

ps why? It is to do with solvents and resin mixes curing to a higher degree than 100% solvent free at ambient temps (10-25C). Add in the added benefits of effective pigment loadings and you get a better barrier coat than pure resin mix can ever be.

pps Interprotect is a barrier that is also a primer for antifouling

 

Interprotect 1000 is a 100% solids epoxy. It looks like epoxy and acts like epoxy, just at a much higher cost then regular marine epoxies. Interprotect 2000 is a primer, with an epoxy base. It's about 50% solids and acts pretty much like what it is, a primer with moderatly good sealing properties. Interprotect 3000 is a cross between 1000 and 2000, being about 80% solids. It's not as effective as 1000 as a barrier coat, but is much better than 2000, which is really just a primer.

So, it's important to discuss which Interprotect product applies. As to Colin's attitude, I can only guess, but Interprotect 1000 is a good product as a barrier coat, again at a much increased cost, comparatively.

 

Colin, I know you have bought in to the marketing hype and that they refer to the 2000e as a barrier coat but the truth is any time you add solvents to aid in application you create microscopic pinholes as it evaporates away during curing, creating the need for more coats. Presumably they have calculated that 10 mil which is about 5 coats is the majic number that allows for this but you've got to ask yourself, if the manufacturer does not have the confidence to use the 2000e alone over raw glass but instead rely on the 1000 or epiglass ht9000 100% solids epoxy to keep the water out why would you? We have been barrier coating boats long before interprotect came along, ive built cold molded wood boats with one layer of dynel or 6 oz glass cloth in epoxy resin and it does a fine job of keeping moisture out unless its compromised. If I had to leave out one part of the interprotect system I would add pigment paste to the resin and skip the 2000e, not the other way around. The 2000e is all about ease of use and its very good for that.

Steve.