: . . .The material should be pourus or rough enough to
: accept the epoxy. sticking to it in all the torquing and bashing aboutthat
: is a boats life. My rocks probobly don't meet that criteria. So
: sandwiching them between glass and epoxy is the experiement . . .

In the late 60's, as student riots flared on campuses the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana lost many windows as a result of rioters throwing the rocks and gravel which the university itself graciously provided, in the form of landscaping materials.

Since the university liked the look of these stone gardens, but wanted the stones to stay outside of their buildings, they tried covering their large areas of gravel and round edged river-washed rock with a layer of epoxy. It gave the rocks a bright shine, and bound them together into a mass that was too heavy to lift, much less throw. they hoped this would be a permanent solution, but within a few months a few stones would be worked free by the action of feet walking over these areas, and over the next two years the effects of UV on the epoxy, as well as winterfreeze and wear, promoted a significant deterioration of the bond between the stones. While the vast quantity of stones remained aggregated, there were enough loose ones to provide projectiles. By that time our troops had left vietnam and the student rage had diminished so I don't think they tried recoating the rock gardens with epoxy.

Without the benefit of glass cloth the epoxy provided an extremely strong embeddmetn for those rocks. None of them were roughed up or otherwise treated in any special way, and the epoxy held them as firmly as portlnad cement -- if not moreso.

I wouldn't wory about your method of mounting those rocks to your boat. Surrounding them in epoxy should be more than strong enough.

PGJ