White is just the cloth. Red is the resin being worked into the cloth to make a layer of a cloth/resin fiberglass laminate.

I saw this being done when I visited the Grady White factory a few years back. I am surprised the workers are not more suited up. Definetely a stinky job especially when you are walking by without a respirator.

Yeah, everyone should take a factory tour.

I've been to seven boat factory's so far, with a few more on "the list".

It's even more fun to take the tour while they are creating YOUR OWN boat.

Interesting stuff.

That looks a bit sloppy. . . what boat manufacturer are we looking at?

Isn't that the Formula factory.. Looks familiar.....

nice.

Not Formula.

So how long do they have before the resin is set up too hard to work?

Kelly

Boat builders can control (are controlled by) the "working time" of resin in several ways. Depends, too much time and one has a lesser bond amoung the layers in open, female molding. They usually have to work fast to get a given job done within the "working time". Usually less than a 1/2 hour for one step. I have seen where problems were addressed after that time, also.

My only experience with resin was not in fiberglass. Rather it was cooking up pitch for lapping tools for polishing optics. No doubt this used a different flavor of resin than that for fiberglass. However, we could add a small amount of various additional ingredients to the resin and it would make a serious difference in the behavior of the stuff. There were cases where we were forced to try to fix a problem after a pour, but those were rarely a complete success. Much, much better to get the brew just right before the pour.

Kelly

The right mix varies throughout the day as temp and humidity change. Fountain (not shown in this thread) shuts down early on the hot/humid days before it takes too much stuff to get the resin to "kick off/harden" that day.

I had the (dis)pleasure of playing with glass & resin when fixing the keel of the Sun Runner. From the same can & tube of resin and hardener, one time it would kick in 10 minutes, sometimes 30. Temp and humidity related I'm sure. And when it does kick, you better be done with what you're doing!