Bill,

No. I'm not making the assumption that one would use the same resin and hardener.

Regardless of the pot life, with wet lay-up one still has to perform the work of wet-out. With infusion, the vacuum pump does that work for you, and in much less time than any human could. So by definition its less work.

Regardless of what resin system you select for a vacuum bagged wet lay-up, you can't walk away from laying up the last layer of fiber for two weeks to do something else. You can do that with resin infusion. Even the longer open mold time prepregs don't offer the lay-up flexibility that resin infusion does.

Sure, you could do a contact mold (no vacuum) wet lay-up with laminating resins and take lots of time between layers, but I'm not interested in doing that.

Sam

: Hi Sam,

: This is an interesting and unexpected topic

: You're assuming that with a wet layup you'll use the same resin/hardener
: that's you would use for the vacuum infusion process. But that's not
: required. There are several resin/hardeners that have very extended layup
: times out there. Most though require a post cure. This isn't all the
: complicated nor necessarily expensive. Electric heater cores can be used
: with inexpensive thermostats for the heat and a foil/foam or foil/glass
: insulation box can be used to contain the heat for the post cure. With the
: oven/vacuum bag you can then also play with pre-pregs, thought the cost
: can get kinda silly. Still, with these methods you can achieve a seriously
: strong and light boat.

: Vacuum infusion has a learning curve too, have seen several projets that
: ended up with incomplete boat parts where the resin didn't infuse as
: planned.

: Either way, strip built is easier/cheaper.

: Bill H.