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From: Keith (no email)
Date: Sat Aug 04 2007 - 13:01:38 EDT
I don't know if it applies to the marine world, but here goes... When I
worked in the plastics industry, one of the products we made were those
woven poly tarps like you see all the time. We made an industrial grade that
was similar to, but a lot heavier than the blue tarps you see falling apart
all the time. We fed a web of woven oriented polyethylene (you can use
polypropylene too) into a thing called an extrusion coater. The web went
into the nip of a couple of cooling rollers and molten polyethylene was
applied to one side, so that it bonded to the scrim. Now the trick is to
cool the molten plastic fast enough so that it peels off the big metal
roller (4' in diameter or so) and doesn't stick to it. We started with a
mirror surface coating (this machine was new to us) and always had sticking
problems. Later when we worked with the manufacturer, we had the surface
recoated to a very fine matte finish. I can't remember the specs, but it was
expressed as a xx micron RMS (root mean squared) finish. It turned out that
a very slight matte finish is actually slicker than a mirror smooth finish,
because of the physical nature of the finish.
Maybe a hint for the next America's cup?
That all being said, probably worthless news to us trawler types, but just
thought I'd toss this one out there for your consideration.
Keith
_____
Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
----- Original Message -----
> Dave Cooper commented: "Its funny that trawler owners don't feel that a
> very
> smooth bottom is worth the effort but a racing sailboat owner will spend
> tens of thousands of $$ for a mirror smooth bottom. Are one or both of
> these
> folks wrong"
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