The new design books arrived a few minutes ago. Monday is holiday so the lot of orders will go out Tuesday.

I was at Uresco, the Owens-Corning distributor, today and saw a product that I have not seen before. That is half inch thick pink foam. I have advocated using the 1” pink foam for lightweight cabinets but wished it could be thinner. Here it is. Its the best choice that I can think of for lightweight shelves and cabinets. Surely it is as light or lighter than Tricel core, and much less cost. Also, the edges are much easier to finish. Vacuum bag thin plywood or even fiberglass onto the faces. The result is shelves for example weighing only ounces. That is one inch foam on the lower half of the load below.

John asked me to look into Rhino Linings Epoxy. http://www.rhinolinings.com/divisions/epoxy
I seem to remember that Jeff from Jeffco Epoxy works for them now. I was given his email and phone number, but he never responded. I also seem to recall that he had actually gotten a USCG approval for a fire retarding epoxy,  without additives. I seem to remember also that the Jeffco Epoxy had a variable hardner ratio. Maybe someone here knows more about these.
I do not see a stretch to failure percentage on their online data sheet. The HDT is very high so I suspect the product is brittle. I have applied for more data and a sample. Maybe I will learn more.

I see a lot of use for Spacebags that are larger. They are so cool when they work. I did 4 baggings in two days in weather just above freezing over the weekend. I ran the vacuum maybe 3 minutes total.
The largest bag made now is 3’ x 4’. I contacted customer service at Spacebags to see if I could talk to development about bigger bags. NO!

Unless I have a patent on one (?), they are not in any way interested. Why would I patent one? I just want a bigger bag. I guess it comes with corporate size, but it is always interesting to see full-on corporate ossification. They don’t even want to discuss another size product or new use.

on

A Sink as a Conceptual Take-off Point
Imagining variations on a sink like this. Imagine in composite even.
http://www.yankodesign.com/2011/09/01/what-a-wave/

I wondered how they actually did it.  Now called Pipeline 3.  And there is the video posted earlier of it sailing.

See http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~philclarke/crew.htm

Courtesy OC

Stephen mostly works with the big boys in volume production marine, wind blades, and aerospace. As a result, room temperature cure epoxy is barely on his radar. That is very different from my DIY guys and the custom builds who both use the above epoxy. He speaks highly of Derakane 411 which is a vinylester that he calls more epoxy than vinylester. The big boys have less concern about impact resistance than cruisers and charter guys do. My one concern with the high temperature epoxy is the brittleness. I will keep studying with Stephen’s information in mind.

Stephen Crane also mentioned some glass fabrics that could change everything. A couple of fiberglass products from the CPIC mill in China have properties close to S glass but at cost and probable volume of E glass. He has some samples of the Tm and Ht products and will be testing them for hard numbers.

Friday I was lucky enough to have lunch with composites guru Stephen Crane. There are huge things shaking out in worldwide composites and he keeps up with that better than anyone I know of. He is now working with Space-X. I’m kind of in the weeds in my corner of the world, with my head down trying to keep up with peoples deadlines most of all. The information was much appreciated. The following assumes I heard all correctly.
The bullet points would be:
Core
New fabrics
New resin
Cg of composites innovation.
Today I will limit to core as I left my notes back in the truck.
Gurit is having some issues with supply and pricing Corecel foam. Mitsubishi owns the patent now. Contact Mitsubishi for a more reliable source.
Divinycel’s days are numbered as a core. It’s manufacture is already banned in Europe. The reason is that dioxin is created during its manufacture. It is now only being made in the US, and despite republican claims that dioxins are one of the major food groups, those days are numbered. It is being replaced with PET (Polyethylene-Terephthalate). The properties are not as good yet as crosslinked PVC of the same density.