Re: Bizarro....

Posted by LeeG on Jun 25, 2004

That's some of what I found on those older hatches,,a dry edge of the hatch rib would have some thickened epoxy applied to it,,clamped,,the edge grain of the 6mm rib would suck up as much epoxy as it could take leaving what's on the exterior to provide further bonding but what's under the 6mm was pretty dry. If there was some on the outside to make a little 3/16" wide fillet at the ends then it could be enough. There was a lot of variation possible if a person followed the directions literally with no previous experience clamping pieces onto end grain plywood,,then stressing it. I think that's why I was seeing such a variation in the hatches, some folks used a fillet, some didn't, some took clamps off in 24hrs, some waited three days, some sealed the edge grain before gluing, some didn't ,etc. Using strips of 3" tape was the easiest method after trying various permutations of glassing just the top, just the bottom, both,,or just tape. At least with the tape one was guranteed to have a 3"x3" area that would NOT delaminate. With a few of the hatches that broke in rescues they were already cracked 1/4" or so underneath the edge of the rib with the first layer of the 4mm delaminating,,,the glue joint was actually pretty good,,the wood couldn't take it as it started delaminating. Once the wood started delaminating it could zip back to the center with only a center 2-3" glued on and the rest of the rib with 1/2 the top veneer of the hatch underside glued to the rib. The hatch might look fine but if you pushed it it would flex up/down a couple inches. I've seen some plastic production kayaks that can pump in quarts of water in rescue practice with marginal fitting neoprene and hard covers but there's no reason a home built boat should have that option.

In Response to: Bizarro.... by George on Jun 25, 2004

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