Jeff McFadden wrote:

Barry & Meps / Stellrecht & Schulte wrote:... snip ...

I believe that 2:1 and especially 1:1 mix epoxies have some sort of "filler" in there and aren't as strong as the 5:1 compositions. But I should probably go check my facts before I spout off about it too much!

Speaking of people who ought to check their facts (meaning me :-)  )... I thought West System was 5:2?

Er, no. You buy 4 litres of resin and 800 ml of hardener as a matching set. Maybe imperial packaging is supplied in the States, but the ratio will be the same.

System 3 epoxies have a very good reputation in boat building.  The founders are chemical engineers and have compounded the product specifically for our uses.
It is a 2 to 1 (by volume) product, but then West System's new G-Flex is a 1 to 1 epoxy and they are very proud of it for marine applications too.  And one I've used some.
I probably just had bad luck with my one-and-only gallon of West System and pumps.  The hardener pump would go squirt-gasp-burble-squirt, leaving me with epoxy that, as one might expect, never hardened.
I've built a few floating objects with System 3.  The most significant one was a middle pontoon for my pontoon boat cum houseboat, which, after I built the house, floated too low in the water, so I built a plywood pontoon with a transom well and a transom.  It gave me excellent service except when I ran it over some submerged wreckage from a steel bridge that had been blasted and dropped in a river that is no longer considered to be navigable.
The annoying thing about that is I had run that stretch of river maybe 200 times and never stumbled upon this wreckage, and had to do it that day with a boatload of paying customers. 
Fortunately for me, I'd built the pontoon with 5 separate watertight compartments, so I had plenty of floatation to get me home.
I like System 3 because if I want a little tiny mix I can use kitchen-type measuring spoons, and mix, say, 2 tablespoons of resin with 1 tablespoon of hardener.  That's virtually impossible with pump dispensers, and it's amazing how often I want to do that.
It's all in the goo, as they say.

With temperatures going down it is benificial to warm the epoxy to 20 degC when mixing it.

Annie Hill wrote:So, small farmers had small hogs.  Do I take it that big farmers have big hogs? 

But what I really want to know is how big the packs are that the rats carry!

I wondered as I wrote that if pack rat was universal usage in the various flavors of English. I take it the answer would be no! :P
Whatever you call a person with a lot of stuff, I'm married to her.

Paul Thompson wrote:Hi Jeff, it's really great that you are able to work again. I was worried that things may have come to a sad and premature end. So I hope that next summer it will be launch day for you and Seablossom.

Annie's comments about encapsulation are spot on and the way to go. Alsob, remember, if it's too hot, you can start on the sail (if you have not already) as I assume your home is well shaded/air conditioned. As always, feel free to contact me if theres anything I can help with.

Ah, I can only wish that I could work in my air conditioned home. My wife is a world class pack rat; there is no possible way to build a sail in here. I can sit here in the cool, but that's about it.
My work building is a converted farrowing house, which was a structure where small farmers housed their sows to give birth and nurse their piglets. That was before your typical American hog housing structure covered an acre or more and contained several thousand hogs in confinement. It too contains several cubic meters of Gloria's junk, covering most of both long outside walls.
Not that it matters. The outside walls are barely over a meter high - hogs aren't very tall. So if there weren't any junk along the walls I still couldn't stand up to work there.
All that said, I have my saws and other tools in there, and what I can't do indoors I do out. And I have a wood stove in there, and a fair collection of trimmings from trees in the fence rows, and a great deal of scrap wood, for gentle heat, and if that's not enough I can fire up the diesel forced air heater and work through the stink. :x]
(note smiley of self holding nose)