Jay

I'm with you. I just got some RAKA from a friend to use though the resin is from CG, like the some of the System 3 and MAS. Hell with trying and hoping it'll work, switch horses and use the RAKA. I'm thinking that it's got to be bad resin or hardener...something...and it'll have to be pin-pointed after the Santa Cruz paddle trip this coming Friday. The glass is your normal S-glass, the very stuff used on all four yaks with zero trouble.

: It's time to try a different epoxy and a different cloth. Where did you get
: the cloth? If you know another builder in the area, maybe you could borrow
: some cloth and a different epoxy to run a few tests on some scrap plywood.

The cloth came from DMI in La Mesa, California. It's 2 inch tape that's been used on every yak I've made, on a sailboat repair, for years; it's 3.2 oz triaxial S-glass; it's 6 oz standard s-glass...I'm thinking it's not the FG.

: Most of the builders on this site use 2 to one. MAS, RAKA, SYSTEM THREE,
: MATRIX and a few use WEST. The two to ones are eser to mix as far as
: ratios. All of those have good success stories. I personally like the RAKA
: no-blush.

I just finished using that very stuff

: I'm curious on exactly how easy this glass is pulling off. Because if you get
: a corner of loose glass, you can pull it off almost anything. I've done
: it.

Well, it's using the finger to rub along the edge, which causes the glass to whiten, then a pull and with almost no effort it's off, shattering the epoxy over the glass. Now the previous four yaks worth of glassing that never happened, the stuff was a tank. I'm still thinking it's the resin or the hardener, or both. It's weird, to say the least.

What do you think about a plastic potting compound to fill the rear compartment side of the rear bulkhead edges. The thought was to have something else for the rear bulkhead to bear agaisnt in case of glass failure.