Hello, Howard, thanks for the note, and sorry it took me a few days.
> I notice from your website that you sell MAS epoxy. About all we can find > out here in the remote hinterlands are the West System products. Is there a > difference, or is this a Ford/Chevy thing, or rather a Cadillac/Chevy thing? > (They both are almost the same produce...one just costs twice as much, i.e., > Escalade/Avalanche) For all practical purposes MAS and West are pretty much the same thing. There are incremental differences; the MAS is better for large-scale 'glassing and coating, the West System cures a little faster. For small projects I wouldn't sweat the variations. > We can also find polyester resins, but no vinylesters. Bob recently told me > he uses 100% vinylester resin to lay up the M-boats. Unless I was mistaken, > that sounds to me like an undocumented, but valuable, feature to have. It's > my understanding the even the high dollar boats only use vinylesters on the > first one or two layers of mat and cloth under the gelcoat for blister > protection, then revert back to the cheaper...errr...less expensive > polyesters for the rest of the layup. I'm not a real expert in the non-epoxy matrices. I do know that vinylester is some percentage better in terms of strength and solubility. It's my opinion that unless you're doing a really gigantic 'glassing project there's no sense using polyester or vinylester. Epoxy is ten times stronger than even vinylester, and in small quantities the added expense is worth it. Cheers, John Chesapeake Light Craft The Best Boats You Can Build http://www.clcboats.com _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
