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Subject: Re: TWL: RE: Blister repair
From: Robert Austin (thataway4@XXX.XXX)
Date: Wed Dec 05 2001 - 18:47:42 EST
Joe Engel says:
>I was surprised to your comment regarding 1973 being a bad year for
>blisters. Our Tollycraft is 1973. I just had her hauled and bottom
>painted again a few months ago and no trace of blisters at all. In >
>general, the folks that I talk with that own Tollyraft vessels don't
>see blister problems. T least not the older ones.
>I was always under the impression that the older the boat, the better
>the blister resistance because back in the late 60's and early 70's they
>built the boats with hand laid hulls and the resin was of higher (more
>expensive) quality back then. Is this not so?
Joe,
If you remember 1973 was one of those oil crisis years--things went way
south in Southern Calif--as did the boat building industry--and this was
when there was a lot of chepaening up of the resins, a question about the
cobalt in the catalyst and when rather massive blistering began to appear.
There were certainly boats built before then that had blisters, and may that
year that did not have blisters. My dad"s1965 Cal 25 developed Blisters in
1979. I had 1969 Newport 30 that started blistering in 1975. Most of the
Columbias after 1968 were all chopper gun--as were many boats--especially in
the cheaper price lines--such as Bayliners (that does not say that they were
not good boats, because they did the job that they were intended to do.
Also in 1973 the Uniflights and Valiants began showing the very severe
blistering--including above the waterline--showing water migration along the
strands of the mat. There are many factors in osmosis. Some of this was
related to the resin glass ratio--and even some hand laid up boats were not
well laminated. My Cal 46 --1973 had extensive blistering. I saw one
Columbia 39 that the hull was finally destroyed on--the water had gotten
into the hull and it lost all rigidity. I saw several European boats of
that vintage that had bad osmosis. I have seen blistering in Cal 24's,
Tritons and even Bounties and Countesses--all very well hand laid up boats.
Pascoe talks about using two different resins in some of the Hatteras--I am
not sure how common this was in the other lines--I have heard that the Chris
Crafts and Bertrums did not use different resens. Frankly I don't think
that many boat builders really knew much about the characteristics of
various resins.--at least they were not talking about it.
Irregardless--very few boats have been destroyed due to blistering--the case
here is probably just superficial in the outer mat layer and hopefully the
"cure" will take care of it for the time thes folks own the boat.
Regards,
Bob Austin,
30 foot single diesel aft cabin Carver
Pensacola, FL.
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