Monthly Archives: June 2014

Assessing Material Strength for Small Parts

By Captain James R. Watson

The appropriate laminate thickness for a particular application is difficult to come up with out of the blue. We have a “feel” for how strong something must be to suit our purposes. Our hands are fairly sensitive for detecting slight load increases, up to about 30 pounds. We can use them to evaluate a variety of materials. The only problem is, we don’t know the numerical equivalent of the pressure we’re applying. Continue reading

primer performance

House Paint Primer Performance

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

In the past, we’ve recommended applying an alkyd base primer over well-cured, clean, and sanded epoxy surfaces. We wanted to know how this primer compared to the newer, fast drying primers now available. We recently did a study of various house paint primers over epoxy to support the growing number of customers using WEST SYSTEM epoxy for building restoration. Continue reading