water based marine grade polyester resin

Dear All,

Just wanted to share this amusing story with the GRP world. I hope this doesnt cause offence to anyone.

A shopfloor labourer knocked on my office door complaining that when he is cleaning up in the GRP laminating at work, this clothes (well overhalls actually which are free of charge to him) often get splashed/stained with resin.

When asking why does just get a new pair of overhalls for H&S reasons, he stated that it takes days to wear in his newly worn overalls. The conversation, shortly went onto cleaning of overalls (please dont ask!!!).

His ultimate solution to this problem was for me to get our company to use a water based resin - so that he can wash his overall in his washing machine, thus saving the company several overhalls a year as they could be reused more. Dispite being a major motor yacht manufacturer, can anyone see a problem if I were to implement this change to please the labourers.

 

Keep him! He IS looking at the bottom line. Beats the other type.

 

A Janner????

 

I too love the idea of water based resin. Fiberglass is still in its infancy and I hope that someday science will catch up to us and we can once again work in a place devoid of fumes and hazardous chemicals.

As an immediate concern for your company I think you should re-examine your training procedures. A company is only as strong as its weakest links and in this case that employee sounds like he doesn't even have a clue what industry he works in.

 

I have a couple of things to say:

There are polyester resins which at least can be mixed with an equal amount of water, and then still give a nice product. Not for boatbuilding, though...

Same for epoxy resins. I have been experimenting a lot with that, for epoxy flooring. Does not give any gloss though, and the surface is somewhat porous.

It is very possible to run a company with workers like this. Just see if your company is organised in such a way, that the workers are given jobs which they can handle. Have them supervised, though. 2 nice stories about that:

1. I was at the launching of a hopper dredger, and we were standing in the dock, just before the thing went into the water. We bumped into a welder, and after some talk, we asked him what kind of boat it was. His first response:
a SHIP.
Yes, but what kind of.
He turned around, looked along the ship, towering at least 20 meters above him. His response:
a BIG SHIP.

Still a better welder than I am....

2. One of our customers called me (I sell composite materials). He went on holiday for a week, and after his return he found out some things were going wrong, and he called me for advise.
He explained about his company:
"You can learn monkeys to laminate. They will deliver a perfect job. Just don't leave them alone for a week, because when you come back they will just be swinging in the trees, and eating banana's."

My response:
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys...

We had a good laugh, though...

 

I don't know what all the fuss is about. We use water based resins in all our boats, infact Mrs Puff swears by it, SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

 

The fire inspector that is harassing me is insisting that I switch to water based resin!!!!

 

Tell him to switch to acetone for fire fighting!

 

LOL. Even the water based resin will not, or is not supposed to desolve in the washing machine after cured. I do however suspect the submarine guys are heavily into water based resins that dissove after they cured.

You get some el cheapo plastic aprons the guy can wear over his overall. He may even be able to just peel the cured resin from the platic hence save the plastic aprons too




I think that guy was pulling your leg. Seriously.

 

Hmmm, the fire fighter might be right. There IS a tendency to move towards water based resins and other non combustible solutions.

To my mind comes www.acrylicone.com, a water based acrylic resin with calcium sulphate aggregate, which is now widely used in architecture, art and the like. However, this material is not ready for boating yet.
Another is www.combiolite.com resin (is their website up yet?) which is a renewable source resin, which should be able to be used in boating, but needs an 80C cure. Also this resin is not harmful and non combustible.

So things ARE moving into these directions, but it will take some time still.

 

Or you could tackle it the other way. Instead of overalls, spray the workers with a fast curing foam. At the end of the day, they peel it, and any epoxy splashes off and dispose of it.

Would naked with lots of barrier cream be a good interim step

 

depends on the workers. For what I see in most polyester shops, I would vote "no".

But I understood that women are much more accurate. So I can imagine that at one time I will vote for a whole hearted "yes".

 

LOL!!

But you really can't say he wasn't right...

 

Tell him to switch for water based diesel fuel for his trucks and water based gasoline for the wifes automobile.

 

I think you guys are looking this at the wrong way. If the workers have a problem wearing in overalls then why not help the wear in process a bit. Get a lenght of big diameter pipe (half a meter), put end plugs in and attach some sort of pulling handles (so the pipe rolls nicely). Next time someone complains about stiff overalls, fill the pipe with new overalls and stones and tell the guy to pull the apparatus around a block or two. Shoud soften the fabric (and the guy) nicely.

Lurvio