Tag Archives: Tom Pawlak

The repairs are transparent and difficult to detect.

Repairing Dented Varnish with G/5

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

Photo above: Dented varnish repaired with G/5 Five minute adhesive. The repair area is quite difficult to detect.

A few years ago a customer approached me at one of the trade shows to say he loves our G/5 Five-Minute Adhesive for filling dents in wood trim prior to reapplying varnish. I thought what a great idea. It cures clear, can be wet sanded in an hour (longer if you are dry sanding), and can be varnished over without a problem. It looks much better than filling with wood putty because it is clear. It can be difficult to match the surrounding wood color when filling with wood putty.

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The finished custom wastebasket fits perfectly in the drawer.

Making Custom Wastebaskets

By Tom Pawlak — Retired GBI Technical Advisor

Photo above: The finished custom wastebasket fits perfectly in the drawer.

I don’t know about you, but I have problems finding wastebaskets that fit the spaces I have in mind. The baskets are either way too small or a bit too large for the opening. It happened at a previous house we lived in and it happened again in our current home. My solution was to make my own custom wastebaskets with 4 to 6mm (3 16″ to 1 4″ thick) plywood sealed with and glued together with WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy. Continue reading →

Close up of a soft eye pad mounted to the deck of a Bufflehead. The pad eyes Hugh Horton used on the Bufflehead deck were made wtih Twaron™ an aramid fiber. The soft pad eyes are strong yet not as likely as rigid pad eyes to catch a knuckle or a knee cap.

Make Your Own Soft Eye Pads

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

If you look closely at some of the photos in the Bufflehead article, you will notice small eye pads  (also called pad eyes) in strategic locations inside and outside of Hugh Horton’s Bufflehead. Hugh makes this lightweight carbon fiber or Twaron™ reinforced nylon line eye pads for his sailing canoes.

He glues them onto the decks or inside his sailing canoes—wherever they’re needed to hold supplies in place or hold flotation inside the hull. The eye pads are easy to make and amazingly strong. Continue reading →

Fast Blister Repair with Six10

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

This fast blister repair method is tailored to fixing individual gel coat blisters prior to bottom painting. The advantage of this method is it can repair blisters on hulls recently pulled from the water or hulls that have been out for some time.

Fast Blister Repair Method

  1. Open the Blisters

    Open blisters with a small abrasive tool like 3M’s Rolock™.  2″ diameter sanding disk with 60-grit sandpaper. Make sure you have removed the entire blister, including the edges of the blister dome.open the blisters

  2. Clean the Cavity

    Wipe the cavity clean with an alcohol prep pad or paper towels that have been soaked in isopropyl alcohol. Be generous with the alcohol and change towels frequently so the contaminants are removed rather than spread. Repeat the alcohol wipe process and allow the laminate to dry to the touch. It is particularly important to repeat the alcohol wipe on blisters that were fluid-filled at the time they were ground away.Wipe the blister cavity clean with an alcohol prep pad.

  3. Fill with Six10

    Fill the cavities with Six10 Thickened Epoxy Adhesive dispensed through the static mixing wand.Fill the cavity with Six10

  4. Spread the Six10

    Spread the Six10 Adhesive flush with the surrounding hull with a wide putty knife or plastic spreader. Avoid overfilling the cavities because Six10 is difficult to sand.Spread the Six10 Adhesive flush with the surrounding hull with a wide putty knife or plastic spreader. 

  5. Wet Sand

    Wet sand with 80–120-grit wet/dry sandpaper or wash with water (no soap, no ammonia) and sand dull with 100-grit sandpaper. If you are using Six10 in warm conditions, you should be able to wet sand and bottom paint later the same day. If working in cooler temperatures, allow the epoxy to cure overnight before sanding. wet sand the blister repair area

  6. Paint

    The final step is applying your choice of bottom paint to complete this fast blister repair job.Alkyd finish topcoat

Why this Fast Blister Repair Method Works

Six10 Adhesive is epoxy thickened with fumed silica, which allows the epoxy to remain an excellent moisture barrier. When the static mixer is used to dispense it the blister cavity&nbspis filled with air-free epoxy. This is important because small bubbles in coatings and putties degrade moisture barrier potential by creating shortcuts for moisture to permeate the hull. In the end, Six10 produces a moisture barrier that is better than the original gelcoat.

In our Gelcoat Blister manual, we recommend filling and fairing extensively blistered hulls with WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy thickened with one of our low-density fillers (407 Low Density or 410 Microlight®). The hollow microscopic spheres used to make low-density fillers easy to sand, make them poor moisture barriers. So, the blister manual requires that an effective epoxy barrier coat be applied over the filled and faired surface.

Six10 Adhesive is an excellent option for filling ground-out blister cavities—especially if you don’t plan to barrier coat your hull.

More Good Reasons for Using Six10

Six10 is simple to use. No stirring is required when the epoxy is dispensed through the static mixer. The Six10 cartridge fits any standard caulking gun and always dispenses epoxy at the perfect mix ratio. Six10 makes filling blisters easy and efficient. This is comforting to know whether you’re doing the job yourself or paying someone else to do it.

The repaired panel is back in place on the camper. A coat of Krylon Fusion™ textured, plastic- compatible paint completed the repair.

Camper Panel Repair

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

Above: The repaired camper panel is back in place on the camper. A coat of Krylon Fusion® textured, plastic-compatible paint completed the camper repair.

Todd Lynch, one of our valued employees, brought in a damaged plastic panel from the back end of an 11-year-old pop-up camper and asked if it was worth fixing. It came from his hunting camper which had been rear-ended. He just wanted it to be functional. The impact had made cracks at nearly every screw hole for holding the panel in place, making it doubtful it would last another trip down the highway. Continue reading →

Both wood/epoxy and traditionally built canoes and kayaks were on display.

Small Craft Builders Rendezvous

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

Above: At the Small Craft Builders Rendezvous, both wood/epoxy and traditionally built canoes and kayaks were on display.

In July 2008 I attended the Small Craft Builders’ Rendezvous in Peterborough, Ontario at the invitation of Ted Moores and Joan Barrett. Their company, Bear Mountain Boats, was one of the sponsors of the gathering which included modern wood and epoxy constructed boats as well as traditionally built wooden canoes. Those attending ranged from professional builders to serious amateurs. Continue reading →

The Lighthouse Project

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

Bob, my brother-in-law, has a beautiful yard that he has set in a nautical theme. He had been looking at lighthouse plans and asked if I was interested in helping build one with WEST SYSTEM® epoxy. All the plans that he looked at were for flat paneled six or eight-sided lighthouses built with plywood. I was interested in a project that was a bit more challenging and unique, so I suggested we build a stripped plank version. That way the tower could be round and tapered like many of the popular lighthouses around the world and it would differ from the flat-sided variety often seen in people’s yards. Bob liked the idea, so he went online and found photos of lighthouses that he liked. In the end, we based our design on the Marblehead lighthouse located on the southwestern shore of Lake Erie. Continue reading →

Using G/5 Five Minute Adhesive

G/5 Five-Minute Adhesive

Uses and Tips for Furniture Repair and More

by Tom Pawlak and Captain James R. Watson

Above: G/5 Five-Minute Adhesive is applied neatly to a furniture joint. 

Let’s look at some ways G/5 Five-Minute-Adhesive can be used around the house for everything from furniture repair to building model railroads.

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Gougeon 12.3 canoes on display.

The Gougeon 12.3 Canoe

By Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

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Cover Photo: A small sampling of the Gougeon 12.3 canoe family. Robert Monroe’s cold-molded canoe (foreground) came from a half-mold that eventually resulted in the a 12.3 mold (object directly behind first canoe) which has been used since 1989 to produce dozens of offspring that reflect a wide raged of tastes and technology.

Above: The latest generation of employees and their Gougeon 12.3 canoes.Building a Gougeon 12.3 has become a rite of passage for new employees. 

The Gougeon 12.3 canoe represents several decades of experimentation by employees of Gougeon Brothers, Inc. Dozens have been built but no two are exactly alike. The evolution of the Gougeon 12.3 parallels our love of boating, passion for innovation and desire to build better boats—all of which contribute to the products we produce today.

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Mary aboard her 12.3 kayak

Turning a Gougeon 12.3 into a Kayak

by Tom Pawlak — GBI Technical Advisor

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.

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