Alternatives to West System Resins?

[Waterborn]

Most of my experience is with West System. Between my father and I- several built canoes and kayaks inlcuding carbon fiber work. My last project was a "wave ski" (a high performance sit on top sort of kayak/surfboard) I tried a product called RAKA EPOXY. I believe it was 30-40 percent less money that W.S. It turned out just fine.
If you use it I would like to hear back from you.

Cheers!
http://www.raka.com/

[Christian Van H]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

If you are tabbing in Bulkheads and interior furniture, polyester resin is fine. Until recently nearly every boat built (without a molded interior pan) was done this way. SYstem 3 Epoxy is good, not sure if they are still around.

I completely disagree with this. My boat was originally built this way. If you grab the tabbing with a pair of pliers and yank, you can pull the tabbing right off the hull. Polyester DOES NOT adhere to cured polyester anywhere near as well as epoxy. Other have already posted similar experiences here. WEST themselves have done testing that proves this. Bulkhead and interior tabbing is no place to go cheap...

[mesquaukee]

Polyester resin works for most repairs or bonding provided there will not a lot of bending or distortion.
If your boat is a newer boat with a thin flexible laminate (woven fabrics and stitched oriented strand fabrics)skin use epoxy. The hull will bend and work, this will put a lot of flexing stress on the joint.
If it is the old fashioned thick over-designed hand laid up or chopper gun sprayed hull use polyester resin. The hull will not bend or work so anything attached to it will not be stressed. Just prepare the surface so it is rough with a lot of glass exposed.

[Beausoleil]

Originally Posted by mesquaukee

Polyester resin works for most repairs or bonding provided there will not a lot of bending or distortion.
If your boat is a newer boat with a thin flexible laminate (woven fabrics and stitched oriented strand fabrics)skin use epoxy. The hull will bend and work, this will put a lot of flexing stress on the joint.
If it is the old fashioned thick over-designed hand laid up or chopper gun sprayed hull use polyester resin. The hull will not bend or work so anything attached to it will not be stressed. Just prepare the surface so it is rough with a lot of glass exposed.

Being that Beausoleil was built in 1979 in Taipei, Taiwan, I'd suspect that the original tabbing for the bulkheads is all polyester resin. I went ahead and purchase some to be able to tab in rails/stringers (1x2's) to support new small "shelving" under the cabin sole (Formosas have, shall we say, deep bilges!), and pads to mount a couple of A/C AC water pumps - 1/20hp models, so I can't see how the torque could rip those out over time - the screws would fail before the glass/resin would.

But this certainly ended up being an interesting thread - I'll be sure to use epoxy for the heavy duty stuff!

[sailingdude1]

They are a few Epoxies available in the UK now all with excellent laminating and bonding properties, Mas , Sicomin are just two now readiily available, the good thing that west have a good range of filler powders but they are just that a filler powder and not specific to the brand, so they are in fact interchangeable with other branded Epoxy.
Saying all that as long as you key the area in question thoroughly and wipe with acetone to clean/degrease a good quality polyester especially and iso polyester will have excellent bonding capabilities, ive never had any issues with delaminating polyester.

[svadagio]

Raka is somewhat cheeper. I used it to make 3 diesel tanks for my boat. 50 and 100 gal. It is 12 years later and no problem. Used it for many repairs and no problems. They offer a lot of choices. I went with the cheepest.
Bob