![]() In the early years of small FRP boat building, a few companies tried making boats from chopped strands of fibers, mixed with polyester resin and blown through a gun into a mold. You can also see the fibergalss mat being laid the entire length of the boat. It is all matting and roughly 3/8" to 1/2" thick. You can see this if you have ever cut out a chunk of your BU. ![]() Today, there is a large variety of weaves available, but they are all essentially weaves of continuous fibers. These fibers, much like the huge cables that hold up suspension bridges, rely upon the continuous lengths and orientation of the fibers for their strength. The length of some of these woven fibers run the length of the boat. The fiberglass consists of fabrics of woven mat made of continuous fibers. It consists of a basic standard of 65% continuous glass fibers, in the form of fabrics, and 35% plastic resin. This is the full name of what, for over forty years, has been known as the fiberglass boat. Hand laid fiberglass boats (such as Malibu) are also referred to as Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP) boats. Layed up some test sections last night with the Phoenix and it worked well.Here is some interesting information that I found that discusses the difference between Hand laid boats, chopper boats, layed up boats and cored hull boats. I solved this by always having a cup of acetone and a brush handy to give it a quick cleaning between triggering. The external gun that came with my MVP system (think its a Graco or Binks) would occasionally gel up a bit in the air/fluid cap i think the cat would swirl around in the air and there would be a bit that would activate the residual resin on the cap. that was when i switched to "red pop" as we call it the only resin/cat ratio issue i have ever had was when i left the pin out of the cat pump and built an entire four foot by eight foot hatch. So far i have had very little trouble with the system as a whole and it does just what i needed it to do. I have been in the FG biz for long enough to know consistency and attention to details goes a long way, again i only use my chopper gun for quick back up of limited use molds and i have been using tinted catalyst almost since i first got it. Great info, and thanks for taking the time to post it. I am curious if anyone could give me a quick pro/con on internal vs. When i bought my Fit MVP Magnum my thought process was it just seemed simpler and less prone to issues with an ext mix gun. So far it has helped me tremendously for just that and i am pretty happy with how its working out, care and maintenance isnt to bad if you keep on it. I'm a thirty plus year fiberglass veteran and just started using a chopper gun several years ago, mostly to do quick and dirty very low production ( two to five parts) molds. seemed to work fine once i figured that out. Not sure if this is a safety feature or what but the round trigger is an oddity to me. ![]() Triggers a little funny, thought it was not working at first but the way it works theres a slide thing thats required to be in a certain place on the tripper to push the plunger to activate. Just did a few test panels waiting to see how it cures out. Seems to work nice, i like the ergonomics of the body of the gun. Just hooked it up this afternoon for the first time btw.
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