: I had a talk with Platt the other day. He seemed to be tending away from
: varnish or polyurethane on his polyester (dacron) skins. He felt that they
: reduced the ripstop characteristics of the fabric. His new ideas involve
: overlaying the skin with Monokote(r) which is an iron on shiny colored
: heat shrink plastic. It is very common in the RC model world. Fairly
: expensive. It does, as he says, "leave a hell of a nice finish"
: and would be reasonably tough. He has a picture of one of his boats done
: this way on his site (black colored one). Not sure I'd take that approach,
: though.

: The carbon paper sounds interesting. I'll check it out.

: Bill

Hi Bill

yeh, I've done the RC thing in the past, and I still have a friend that flies them ( Pylon Racers ) and a lot of the guys used the Monocote ( brand name ) or others of the kind. It is VERY expensive. Would cost you several hundred $$$ to do a big kayak. It is reasonably puncture resistant, but will tear. It is iron on, and shrinks, but, in time, will sag and have to be reshrunk. Looks good if you can afford it, but I don't know how it holds up under water. Whenever my planes hit the water, they went into the sacrificial burn barrel immediatel afterwards. So, I never really sat around to see how the water affected them. I doubt it would be a top choice of covering materials for a boat. Just my humble opinion.

Rehd