Only issue is of course that in time a gem can be lost in the long grass of another topic. With Peter’s blessing, I have copied some of his contributions from the “New Mooring “ thread in ‘General’ with a more search friendly title here ‘Technical’. Our inline search engine is very good but topic headings help you find things you didn’t even know you needed to know...no?
Ozzie “Interesting stuff guys and great reference material for those following. On that note Peter, that method to recore a soft deck sounds superior to other methods I’ve heard referenced. Can’t remember if it was here or the other place but I remember the poster lamenting the difficulty of reattaching an inner skin under a deck with resin dripping down on you in a confined space. For future reference what brand of epoxy do you recommend. Is the slow set hardener marketed as such or do you just add less.”
Peter T. “ Ozzie, I have been using West System epoxy. I buy 4 litre epoxy and 800 ml hardener so I can use the pumps. That way you always get exact amounts of hardener to epoxy. Never , I repeat, NEVER, use less or more hardener than recommended. Either less or more will both result in an extremely weak mess. If I need smaller amounts than one pump of epoxy, I use a couple of syringes so I can mix up small amounts accurately. Very important.
105 is my resin, 206 is the slow hardener and 205 is the fast. It all depends on the job I am doing, the time it will take and the ambient temperature. On days with sunshine and my boat in the shed, it gets hotter up on deck as When standing on deck, I am not too far from the roof.
When I was last at the fibreglass shop in Hobart, I purchased a cheaper epoxy. It's called "Compset 5-2-1. As well as cheaper, you also get more. In this lot, I got 5Kg of resin and 1kg of hardener. It is completely compatible with other epoxy so they said but Idon't have pumps for those containers.
You would also be aware I am sure that you can get different fillers such as glue powder ( West 403) and microlight fairing powder 410. You just make up what you want. Just remember that you always mix the epoxy with the hardener before mixing in any filler or glue powder.
Just another thing with epoxy, the slower it sets, the stronger it is. Also a box of those surgical disposable gloves are a must. Continued exposure of epoxy to the skin will result in very bad dermatitis. Barrier cream is also a great idea but I just use baby powder to make it easy to get the gloves on
Ozzie, as for that core material fix, my cabin roof, you could hardly walk on it. Now you could jump up and down and get into it with a sledge hammer. It's as solid as a rock now.”
Message here also, is don’t be worried too much about thread drift. It seems to irk posters on other forums but on here we try to accumulate knowledge on the Investigator and certainly in my case every little bit helps.
Peter will also cover his deck strengthening in a new thread. Thanks mate.