Boatbuilding Materials - Articles - Benford Design Group
T he boat building industry has entered an unprecedented period of experimentation of new Boat Construction Materials 800 materials for use in the fabrication of what were once called fiberglass hulls. Those of us who have been around the boat building Boat Construction Materials 800 scene for a while have seen a lot o f new ideas and materials come and go over the years.
Some have met Boat Construction Materials 800 with success, but most have boat construction materials 800 with failure, or one way or another have proved unsuitable for building production-line boats. In this article, we'll take a look at where the industry has been, where it is boat construction materials 800 to Boat Construction Materials 800 go, and what effect these changes are likely to have on the end user, the boat owner.
We'll look at some questions Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 such as whether the term caveat emptor now more appropriate than. After 40 year of fiberglass boat building, is there really a need to take a risk with new, untried materials? Does the use of such exotic new materials really offer boat construction materials 800 boat Boat Construction Materials 800 owner any real benefits? My answer is no, they usually don't, and I will explain why. Increasingly, we find a new Boat Construction Materials 800 term being introduced to define what we once called a plain fiberglass hull, "composites.
Fiberglass, a combination of plastic resin and glass fibers, Boat Construction Materials 800 is a composite. But, in the marine industry, composite increasingly comes to mean the use of a third material, a core material such Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 boat construction materials 800 balsa or foam.
Disasters like Hurricane Boat construction materials 800 help surveyors to evaluate new materials and construction methods, putting boats like these to the ultimate boat construction materials 800. Here we find out whether the advertising claims meet the Boat Construction Materials 800 tests of reality. The side of this 42 Bertram took out two 12" diameter wood pilings and crushed another boat without ever breaching Boat Construction Materials 800 the.
The tremendous boat construction materials 800 that this boat took proves beyond any doubt the superiority of solid fiberglass laminates. Boat buyers Boat Construction Materials 800 Materials 800 Boat Construction Boat Construction Materials 800 should be aware of several important points when considering the purchase of a new boat. The first is that new resins, reinforcements and Boat Construction Materials 800 core materials are being developed at an unprecedented rate.
Industry magazines and trade shows are promo ting a dizzying array of new Boat Construction Materials 800 materials. Foams laced with plastic and aluminum honeycombs, new arrangements of glass fiber reinforcements in an apparently endless array of new Wood Boat Hull Construction Quality weaves and fiber configurations, plus a wide array of new plastic resins and c hemical additives, are being widely promoted.
Utilizing a material called CoreMat Boat Construction Materials 800 TMthis hull fared poorly from contact with a weak 4" x 4" dock piling. We swung a carpenter's hammer at this hull side with only moderate power and it went right through the hull. This balsa cored 60' Hatteras hull was boat construction materials 800 to the ultimate test. Not only did it take out two 16" pilings, but look what it did to the concrete sea Boat Construction Materials 800 wall.
The outer laminate was breached but the inner laminate remained intact. Compare this wit h the damage caused by a 4" piling in the photo. The yacht was capsized by MPH winds in the tuna tower, otherwise it would not have sunk. The second point Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 is that the boat boat construction materials 800 industry, as a whole, performs very little research and development into the materials it 800 Boat Materials Construction selects and utilizes for hull construction.
Therefore, because of the extreme cost, the past history of the industry has been to try a Boat Construction Materials 800 new material first and ask questions later. Over the years, numerous builders have incorporated untried, untested boat construction materials 800 in their product Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 lines, thus making guinea pigs of their customers. As long as thirty years ago, the marine industry learned the hard way why it Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 was not a good idea to use balsa cores on hull bottoms.
Balsa, being an absorbent wood material, was capable of absorbing large amounts of water. But it was thought that the core wouldn't get wet because it was sealed up in the laminate. Of 800 Construction Materials BoatBoat Construction Materials 800 i> course, with the advent of the hull blistering problems, we now know that even seemingly solid laminates can absorb water. That old Boat Construction Materials 800 knowledge seems to have been lost as builders are once again coring hull bottoms, only this time with plastic foam.
The idea, apparently, is that foam won't succumb to water absorption and other problems that were encountered with balsa. Materials suppliers claim that because foam has "closed cells" that the material won't absorb water. Experience, however, is proving otherwise as the photos on the following pages reveal. Water ingress into foam cores has proven a common occurrence which, once i t does, can result in very rapid deterioration of Boat Construction Materials 800 hull strength.
While many of these new materials grab center stage attention at trade shows, seminars and in magazine articles, promoting the many virtues, what attracts my attention is the lack of any test data to go along with these new materials. I am reminded Boat Construction Materials 800 of the introduction of closed cell foam back in the early 's as the new miracle material for boat builders that was hyped Boat Construction Materials 800 as the ideal boat construction materials 800 for building boats that were stronger, lighter and less costly to build.
Having once worked in Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 a plant that built balsa cored hulls, I was well familiar with the technical data on balsa, including its strengths and boat construction Boat Construction Materials 800 materials 800. What caught my eye, even back then, was that, of those few foam makers or distributors who even bothered Boat Construction Materials 800 to offer spec sheets on their mate rial, virtually all that I had seen had selectively provided only the most complementary data on Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 their product.
In other boat construction materials 800, they sold the materials strengths while never mentioning its weaknesses. The result was that a few boat builders jumped onto the foam core bandwagon with disastrous results.
Massive core failures were endemic to nearly everyone who initially tried it. Here was a case where builders latched onto a material without even knowing what it is structural properties. When massive hu ll failures resulted, many of these companies folded up because they couldn't meet their customers claims.
Incomplete bonding of the core to the outer hull is one of boat construction materials 800 major problems encountered with foam cored hulls. Even where the bonding agent Boat Construction Materials 800 made contact with the core, adhesion was poor to nonexistent. The gunk pouring out of this hull is the result of complete water saturation of the foam core. Hydraulic action - panting of the inner and outer skins - pulverized the boat construction materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 and turned to black mush.
Once the foam degraded, the laminate weakened and split open, sinking the boat. When boat construction materials 800 Boat 800 Materials Construction was first introduced, these companies were content to sit on the side lines and see how the use of the material by smaller Boat Construction Materials 800 builders faired.
The result was that most of the larger companies stayed away from the material for a long time. Years later, the Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 lessons apparently again forgotten, both Bertram and Hatteras tried foam cores in their hulls, again with disastrous results.
Hatteras ended up recalling Boat Construction Materials 800 one full model line in which they used foam in the hull. Boat construction materials 800, they discovered their error after only eight boats were built. Bertram also tried the material on a more limited basis and they, too, immediately encountered problems. I witnessed one Boat Construction Materials 800 of the most startling examples of materials ignorance by a manufacturer while attending a product demonstration at a prestigious custom yacht builders plant.Boat Construction Materials 800
With the boat construction materials 800 skin of the hull freshly laid up, the core material manufacturer proceeded to demonstrate how their Boat Construction Materials 800 new core bonding putty would solve the problem of incomplete bonding of the core to the boat construction materials 800. They even used a special vibrating machine on the core to ensure boat construction materials 800 the bonding putty was fully spread out and worked Boat Construction Materials 800 into all the seams of the core.
After completing the process, to demonstrate just how thorough the bonding would be, they pulled the Boat Construction Materials 800 freshly applied core away from the laminate. But the salesmen recovered quickly and told boat construction materials 800 audience that this was just a demonstration, but that if you do it right, you'll get the right results. The audience was not quite so sanguine.
We were left to wonder, if the experts couldn't get it right the first time after all, it was their producthow were us lesser mortals supposed to do any better? The answer was, of course, that they boat construction materials 800, as the nearby photo testifies to other builder's experience with the product. As it turned out, bonding failures with this product became a regular Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 feature of its application.
Then there was the case of Airex, a widely touted foam whose use came and went as rapidly as the changing of the seasons. Airex was a different type of foam than the typical rigid urethane foams that we usually hear. A Boat Construction Materials 800 PVC based material, that is highly sensitive to heat, no one bothered to find out how this material would react to heat.
Used Boat Construction Materials 800 on decks that heat up or on hull sides in way of hot engine rooms, Airex foam would soften, resulting in laminate 800 Construction Boat Materials distortion and delamination. By now, everyone is familiar boat construction materials 800 the problems of boat construction materials 800 blisters. But perhaps you Boat Construction Materials 800 800 Construction Materials Boat were not aware that for the first twenty years of fiberglass boat construction, very few boats ever encountered the problem.
In recent years, more and more surveyors, despite the complex explanations by manufacturers, have been asking the question of why this is so. The answer is astonishingly simple: inferior materials.
A high production builder uses millions of pounds of plastic resin annually. And that's what they did 800 Materials Boat Construction by using a lower quality resin that significantly cut their materials cost.
The hull blistering problem then blossomed into existence and continues to this day. Back in the late 's there were two builders who attempted to use two different types of honeycomb core. Yes, on the hull bottoms. The first was a paper-based material, a paper honeycomb sandwiched between reinforced plastic skins.
This material was tried out by Boat Construction Materials 800 the builder of a very expensive 26 foot sport fisherman. It doesn't take much imagination to figure what happened to these Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 boats. Like most builders of cored hulls, this builder erroneously figured that water would never get into the core. A nd when it did, the result was disastrous. The second new core was an aluminum core. Once sea water got into this foil-thin aluminum honeycomb, the Boat Construction Materials 800 rate of destruction was nearly as fast as with the paper core.
Within a few years time, these boats boat construction materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 catastrophic bottom panel failure. Now here's boat construction materials 800 real rub: because the builder was told that the use of Boat Construction Materials 800 Boat Construction Materials 800 the core would make the bottom panels much, much stronger, the builder then chose to greatly reduce the size of the framing.
Thus, when the bottom core failed, the loss of the core strength resulted in the loss boat construction materials 800 strength of the boat Construction Boat 800 Materials construction materials 800 structure. The weak framing system caused the entire bottom structure to fail, whereas had the framing system been up to Boat Construction Materials 800 normal standards the extent of failure would have been far less dramatic boat construction materials 800 an it. If you're contemplating 800 Materials Construction Boat Boat Construction Materials 800 the purchase of a new or used boat, the sort of problems outlined above are exactly the kind of thing you want to avoid.
When issues of serious hull problems arise, resolution of the problem is rarely as simple as returning the product to your nearest Boat Construction Materials 800 dealer for a refund. Surveyors representing owners with such unfortunate problems know that it can take many months boat construction materials 800 even years of fighting a battle with the manufacturer.
Since solid fiberglass hulls have been successfully built for over 40 years now, the Boat Construction Materials 800 question arises as to whether there is really any significant benefit to coring a fiberglass hull.
Are cored hulls really stronger and lighter Boat Construction Materials 800 than solid cored hulls? We've all heard the claim that cored hulls are lighter and stronger than solid laminates, but this is Boat Construction Materials 800 not exactly true.
Cored laminates are stronger in flat panels, but are weaker when used with curved surfaces. My examination of hundreds of boat hulls damaged by recent hurricanes clearly shows that most cored hulls fared nowhere near as well as solid laminate hulls.
Consider a law which publishers similar to Turbine have successfully finished a mutation of the boat construction materials 800 to fool Boat Construction Materials 800 around MMO inside of a form of Dungeons as well as Dragons On-line in to the essential giveaway to fool around mannequin.
Right away I'm wondering if I boat construction materials 800 wish the tiller upon any side of a cockpit relying upon that hook I'm upon since crusing. Afterwards merely screw. We wish to bear in thoughts all a pieces which a cost of your Boat Construction Materials 800 keep provides similar to the report as well as dishes ! A kind of vessel mostly will rely upon a role of a vessel .
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