Above: Tom’s wife Mary paddles aboard her Gougeon 12.3 kayak on the Rifle River Recreation area in Lupton, Michigan.
I recently modified the deck of my wife Mary’s fiberglass canoe (one of dozens built from the Gougeon 12.3 mold) to make it more seaworthy and to facilitate a spray skirt. More like a kayak. Previously, the decks covered only the ends of the boat, leaving the middle 40% wide open. I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out.
WEST SYSTEM® Six10 is a two-part, pre-thickened epoxy adhesive formulated with properties that make it perfect for many adhesive applications. Compared to other ready-to-dispense adhesives, its particular physical properties make it ideal for stitch and glue boat construction, fiberglass laminate repair and general bonding. This new formulation has a good balance between the elongation and toughness of G/flex® and the strength and stiffness of our 105 Resin-based epoxies. You can use it with as many materials as possible including wood, metals and composites. The long working time with fast thru-cure and unique shear thinning are additional characteristics formulated into Six10 that contribute to its ease of use. Continue reading
The WEST SYSTEM® Six10 epoxy cartridge is comprised of the cartridge body, removable nose plug, and a threaded retaining nut. A 600 static mixer is included with the cartridge. (It’s called a static mixer because it has no moving parts.) The cartridge fits into any standard caulk gun—manual, cordless, or pneumatic—and allows simultaneous dispensing and mixing of the two-part epoxy.
by Captain James R. Watson—GBI Technical Advisor
Above: Captain James R. Watson in his kayak. Note how the kayak rides at anchor from the bow.
Kayaks are versatile craft. I’m a lucky guy who has had decades of pleasure cruising, exploring, fishing, and simply relaxing on many different streams and lakes throughout Michigan and Canada in my stripper kayak. Comparing the investment dollar per pleasure derived, my kayak wins hands down over all the other watercraft I’ve owned. In her wake, I’ve been taught many lessons, albeit some the hard way. Here are a few I thought worth sharing. Continue reading
The McKenzie-style drift boat is designed for maneuverability and is especially suited to get you down wild rivers…
…to not-so-wild rivers (below) where the fish are.
The wet winter months in Oregon are perfect for garage projects like boat building and car restoration. They are less than “ideal,” however, if you want a perfect epoxy finish for your boat and your garage is unheated. Continue reading
For many decades Gougeon Brothers Inc. has kept in contact with multihull designer James Wharram. Wharram, of Cornwall, UK, has sailed and designed Polynesian-style catamarans for 50 years. Amateurs and professionals have built his boats and sailed them to all corners of the planet. The designs he creates with his engineer and artist partner Hanneke Boon have evolved over the years, but remain unmistakably, Wharram Catamarans. Continue reading
Above: The completed Woodville Queen with a full head of steam.
My father, Glenn P. Stewart, instilled in me an interest in steam engines. He frequently talked about his early experiences (about 1930) working in a sawmill powered by a steam engine. A thought went through my mind. Here I am a graduate mechanical engineer and I don’t even know how a steam engine works. So I went to several steam engine shows in the area and got more interested in them while learning how they operate. My wife and son Mike bought me a steam launch kit with a boiler and engine kit which I enjoyed building and operating with radio controls. Continue reading
Above: Project Brighter World on demonstration day. The boat performed very well, sailing at windspeed even though it was about 30% heavier (due to the heavy batteries) than the normal sailing vessel design weight. The project was considered a tremendous success.
In early 2007 Impossible Pictures of London, U.K. approached me to participate in a boat demonstration using a Flettner rotor-powered trimaran. They were filming a demonstration for the Discovery Channel’s Project Earth series. Our program would be called Brighter World. Two atmospheric scientists, John Latham and Stephen Salter, had devised the Albedo effect, a way of changing the reflectivity of clouds to deflect some of the sun’s heat, cooling the oceans. It required a flotilla of vessels to seed clouds with small saltwater particles. Our trimaran would be a prototype for this type of vessel. Continue reading
A Salford University academic with ambitious plans to send tourists into space by 2013 unveiled the UK’s largest-ever space rocket on Tuesday, July 1, 2008. The project, sponsored in part by WEST SYSTEM UK Distributor, Wessex Resins &Adhesives Ltd., used WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy in the rocket casing and for fairing the body. Steve Bennett, who heads the University’s Space Technology Laboratory, presented his 58′ Nova 2 rocket at the University and discussed how his company, Starchaser Industries Ltd. (Starchaser) plans to launch it next year with the help of school children from across the UK. Continue reading
Above: The proa Slingshot was one of the true pioneers of speed, topping out at 40 knots.
There are those who believe sailing fast means advanced composites with high-tech fibers, exotic cores, and plenty of cash. Very few think of wood when they think of fast, but before carbon fiber, before Kevlar™…there was wood. Continue reading