When ordering 5oz cloth from Raka I informed Larry of the concerns I had read about here regardeing the 5oz cloth. He told me that the concerns were not warranted and that a seal coat would keep the weave from appearing. After using the cloth on the hull (and getting the weave and solid white lines in a consistant pattern in one area) I called Larry and informed him of my delima. He sent me enough 6oz to finish the deck (no charge). He also seemed to have difficulty beliving the lines were not my fault. Not knowing for sure that they weren't I didn't argue.

For this reason I cut the excess cloth from the areas of the hull that had the white lines, put a seal coat on some scrap wood, then overly wet it out with fresh epoxy to be sure of no starvation. White lines in the same pattern were in this sample as well. You could easily line them up with the lines on the hull. Larry was informed of this and finally informed that there have been some problems with this and must be a defect in "some" of the cloth. I was not happy with this since he convinced me that there were no problems with the 5oz cloth and I now have a hull with weave patterns and white lines at the bow.

I now have enough of the 5oz for another boat, as I was planning to build a Great Auk, but will not use it on the outside of anything. I am no expert, but this has been my experience. The Raka epoxy was great, no probs there, but I am not sure if I will deal with Raka again as I feel I was misled by Larry.