Need help....quick fiberglass and resin questions before I place order

Ok I have been doing a lot of reading on here and there are just acouple things I just havent been able to figure out 100% yet and I am close to being able to make my complete order for my transom, stringers and deck restoration.

My first question is, please explain in short verious why I should use epoxy resin over polyester for my project or vise versa. Only thing I underdstand so far is epoxy is much more expensive than polyester. I also know that polyester requires wax as a finishing coat. Any other pros and cons???

Second question is I understand that I will need CSM for most of the job and I have read that most people alternate between CSM and Woven Roving with a final layer of CSM to make it smooth. Is that the right idea? So the order for the layup would be the following for the transom, stringers and deck...

bare wood saturated with resin.
then a layer of 2oz CSM.
layer of 18oz woven roving
then another layer of 2oz CSM

then your ready for gelcoat or paint?? is that sufficent

Re: Need help....quick fiberglass and resin questions before I place order

sorry bud....your way off on everything.

read the hull extension thread for fiberglass discussions and lay up schedules......it has an index up front.

epoxy if u want....its your money. but your boat is made of poly.

2.....wet out the wood.....the word saturate is dangerous to a beginning glasser.

3. matt first...allways....then roving....then veil roving...

cheers
oops

Re: Need help....quick fiberglass and resin questions before I place order

oops! said:

sorry bud....your way off on everything.

read the hull extension thread for fiberglass discussions and lay up schedules......it has an index up front.

epoxy if u want....its your money. but your boat is made of poly.

Click to expand...

This is an ongoing debate on this board... basically, poly is cheaper and not as strong as epoxy. Epoxy smells less but over time you may get an allergic reaction to one of the components.

I won't go into the poly vs. epoxy arguments here, read up the various articles for positions posted by myself, oops, ondarvr and others in many threads.

Not to poke at oops, but although it seems "common sense" to repair a boat with what it was made from, intuition can be misleading. Ask a welder if he'd repair an iron engine block with molten iron

oops! said:

2.....wet out the wood.....the word saturate is dangerous to a beginning glasser.

3. matt first...allways....then roving....then veil roving...

cheers
oops

Click to expand...

For #2, by wet out the wood he means "paint" some resin on the wood so it's wet, then apply the glass. This keeps the wood from soaking all the resin away from the glass when it's applied, which would lead to a poor bond.

#3 is for using poly resin... with epoxy you can just use cloth, cloth cloth or biax without mat. For poly you can use mat/roving/mat/roving etc or even biax with mat like 1708.. it's cloth and mat in one.

Erik

Re: Need help....quick fiberglass and resin questions before I place order

From what I know epoxy is much better to use in small indoor areas. The epoxy from US composites hardly has any smell at all.

I just used three layers of 18 oz roving with my epoxy

Re: Need help....quick fiberglass and resin questions before I place order

I used Poly on everything from Stringers to deck. I think it turn out great. Its very solid and I think it will last a long time. Bought 5 gallons of Poly for $110 with hardener..that same amount would have been ALOT more for Epoxy. I used CSM on my stringers and Deck with a final layer of 6 oz cloth on the deck covered with Gel Coat. . No Roving. If I were doing a transom I would then use that.

Good luck

Re: Need help....quick fiberglass and resin questions before I place order

thanks for clarifiying erik.......this keyboard is allmost toast and wont let me type detailed explanations