We are still shopping around and looking at boats at various yards checking quality and processes being used before we commit Shamrock to the gelcoat peeler. Equally distressing is the letter from Roger Olson received 4 years ago but dated, believe it or not, "May 30, 2005 2:05 PM" looks like Rogers computer clock was a little screwed up; for that matter so was his account of the history of Shamrock. Back then Sam Morse had Crystalliner add a second coat of gelcoat to the bottom and the trapped resin did not cure; it also appear the original owner John Perbaugh, the first buyer, asked for additional gelcoat, so does this make 3 coats? Roger goes on to suggest, not sure because it was before his watch, the gelcoat may have been stripped and a barrier coat may have been applied. In short, this throws all the estimates we have out the window... I looks like we will have to haul and cut a window to make an acessment of the situation and go from there. I took a look at some boats being gelcoat peeled only, no deep peeling including glass layers, Smith saturation epoxy, epoxy fared and 4 coats of barrier coat, at Napa Valley Marina today. They did a 40+ power boat with speed rails molded in, nice work, good faring job. They also had a 50' catamaran gelcoat peeled and same process in the works, looks to be more of a fare job than I'm seeing elsewhere. Only down side seems to be the long trek north up the Napa River every year to haul and verify integrity of work and repair any new blisters if found (covered by warranty), If found, this will probably mean another 3 months on the hard waiting for the hull to dry pending repairs. If all goes well, it comes with a 5 year warranty at $5,880.00 for the job, this is half the cost of a deep peel and 2 layers of glass. Marty
Dear Marty,
I’m certainly empathetic to your problem.
I do have a suggestion. Before you commit to anything
call Rich Worstell at Valiant Yachts. He is a dear old
friend and probably has more experiance with
blistering than anyone anywhere. Valiant as you recall
had the biggest blister problem in the industry until
he purchased the company and reformed the building
process.
He is still repairing first generation boats, still.
Peel, drying and vinylester or epoxy coating is pretty
standard these days with a layer of vinylester soaked
mat if problem is deeper. Some anecdotal evidence
suggest vinylester is better than epoxy for staving
off future problems
Personally, I wouldn’t get too cranked up over the
problem because with the exception of a few boats with
fire-resistant resins andwoven only layups the problem
is limited to cosmetics. A good dry-out and recoating
works fine.
Don’t forget about the possibility of water migrating
from the inside as well. Bilge should be dry and even
coated if possible
If you want to contact me directly feel free to do so.
Regards,
Jim
— Marty Chin <marty_chin@yahoo.com > wrote:
We are still shopping around and looking at boats at
various yards checking quality and processes being
used before we commit Shamrock to the gelcoat
peeler.Equally distressing is the letter from Roger
Olson received 4 years ago but dated, believe it or
not, “May 30, 2005 2:05 PM” looks like Rogers
computer clock was a little screwed up; for that
matter so was his account of the history of
Shamrock. Back then Sam Morse had Crystalliner add a
second coat of gelcoat to the bottom and the trapped
resin did not cure; it also appear the original
owner John Perbaugh, the first buyer, asked for
additional gelcoat, so does this make 3 coats?Roger
goes on to suggest, not sure because it was before
his watch, the gelcoat may have been stripped and a
barrier coat may have been applied. In short, this
throws all the estimates we have out the window… I
looks like we will have to haul and cut a window to
make an acessment of the situation and go from
there.I took a look at some boats being
gelcoat peeled only, no deep peeling including
glass layers, Smith saturation epoxy, epoxy fared
and 4 coats of barrier coat, at Napa Valley Marina
today. They did a 40+ power boat with speed rails
molded in, nice work, good faring job. They also had
a 50’ catamaran gelcoat peeled and same process in
the works, looks to be more of a fare job than I’m
seeing elsewhere. Only down side seems to be the
long trek north up the Napa River every year to haul
and verify integrity of work and repair any new
blisters if found (covered by warranty), If found,
this will probably mean another 3 months on the hard
waiting for the hull to dry pending repairs. If all
goes well, it comes with a 5 year warranty at
$5,880.00 for the job, this is half the cost of a
deep peel and 2 layers of glass.Marty
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Hi Marty,
I am familiar with your boat and knew John Perbaugh. I was there when the boat was hauled and the decision was made to do the blister job. I think the gel coat was completely removed by grinder. A barrier coat was applied and boat was back in the water in a week. Ala Wai Marine did the work. This was around 1994 but I'm not exactly sure. The blistering it had was primarily very small blisters but there were hundreds of them. Also there were a handful of quarter sized ones. So that's about all I can tell you about the blister repair.
Ron Thompson
Ho'okahiko #97
----- Original Message -----
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Well, here we are waiting for the hull to dry out on Shamrock hull 92. Svendsen's Marine in Alameda,CA. is doing an excellent job. Svendsens peeled down past the 7.5 oz. mat to remove all the blisters and the bulk of the moisture. We had a multitude of voids, air pockets and lay-up contaminates in the mat and first few layers of cloth, even found a few small chunks of wood in the cloth. Don't panic, this is typical of production boats, even the multi-million dollar boats.
The peeler they are using is called a Gelplane, incredible tool, makes quick work of the peel process, 1.5 days to peel, 2 days to trim, sand, pry off any loose layer of glass and fare the hull for glass lay-up.
We are down to green, clear glass, plenty of hull thickness left, still 3/4" at the head discharge thru-hull near the keel, 3/8-1/2" at the thru-hull fittings higher up the hull; after laying up 3 layers of glass and epoxy, we should be back up to the original hull thickness.
Moisture readings over the entire hull bottom prior to peeling were over 30%, we only have one area at the keel, center of the hull which is at 25%, remainder of the hull is around 12-15%, moisture levels dropping like a rock, down 5% since last night.
In retrospect, we feel we made a good decision to peel and not screw around with grinding and patching. We had a lot of pressure from friends and others to patch and sail or sell, passing the problem on to the next party, not something we are acustomed to doing. The guys at Svendsen's Marine are some of the best in the industry at glass work, have see may examples of their work over the years, when our hull is complete, I suspect Shamrock will be as strong as, if not stronger than the day she was built.
In researching osmosis, I did not find one boat manufacturer that didn't experience osmotic blister in one form or another through their entire production run, I seen hulls built before and after a hull which had blister, have no blisters at all; have seen two hulls built side by side with the same crews and materials, one got blisters and the other did not. In other words, no manufacturer is exempt, popular opinion regarding osmosis is, it not a matter of if a hull will get blisters, it's a matter of degree of severity and when it will occure. No product, polyester, vynalester or epoxy will totaly elimate osmotic blister in FRP boats, better products like vynalester and epoxy will definately slow the process. Nothing lasts for ever; I think our Mr. Cofee machine is #50 in the line-up.
Fiberglass hull building is a nasty, filthy, toxic environment to work in; I can remember when we worked in blue jean, t-shirts and sneeker, no respirators-protective clothing, sticky from head to toe with resin and glass particles stuck everywhere. Back then, we didn't know removing resin from our skin with acetone was a stupid thing to do, draws the resin directly into the skin, use white vinegar. We worked in a shed with a rock floor often still damp from the last rain, air, wind, dust and rain coming through the cracks in the wall; slapped together plywood tables for laying out glass, bare plywood holds moisture, leave a piece of cloth on the table overnight and it picks up moisture, can't feel it, but it's there. Still make me itch just thinking about it, it wasn't until years later that we learned how toxic epoxy was to work with, suprised our son didn't come out with two heads in stead of one.....
Work place hygene, clean lay-up areas, protective clothing, respirators, all contribute to safer and healthy working environment;, better construction material products, tools and techniques are helping to produce more durable products.
We are still very much in love with Shamrock, the SLM folks did a heck of a job building her.
If we didn't own a BCC, we would still be out there looking to buy one.
Cheers,
Marty & Linda Chin
BCC Shamrock
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