Dear wood frame restorers!
As for Bob Nogueira, my former hobby was to renovate old wooden sailboats
and I also built an 8-meter yacht in 1983-84 using the West epoxy system.
This boat is now in the US.
I totally agree to Bobs article and since epoxy soaks very good into ash i
do think that epoxy is a very good solution in "the Morgan ash frame"
applikation.
Something very important is to dry the wood very carefully all the way down
to what we in Sweden call carpenter dry wood which is 7% moisture. Another
important thing is to treat every single squaremillimeter with at least 3
layers of epoxy. If you are careless with that, the ash will rot very fast
as damp will soaks into the wood.
As I mentioned ash is very good for epoxy treatment. Mahogany, specially
abashi- mahogany. peach pine, oregon pine and balsa, are also very good
woodmaterials to treat with epoxy, but dont try it on oak. Oak is to hard,
and contains a lot of acid which is not good for the epoxy.
A very good book in this matter is:
The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction
623.822 GOU - Gougeon, Meade (1985)
The West system is described in full detail by the system's inventor's.
The method of moulding wooden hull with glue is rather old. The US Navy
built torpedoboats during the war using
warm moulded wood hulls.
If you dont like modern methods and rather prefer the old fashioned way for
wood impregnation, I suggest that you use cooked linseed oil diluted with
30-50% terpentine. treat several times but dont overdose. Linseed oil is
also good for rust.
Bengt Casseborn
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