Firstly, I would contact West about abrasion testing. The do abrasion testing, but have never compared graphite/silica to aluminum. They may have some useful data or be willing to do some testing for you, but if they are not willing to do the testing, they will likely tell you how you can do it at home. They ran an article in Epoxyworks not long ago on how to do a variety of testing in a home shop. I have spoken with Tom Pawlak via email and on the phone, and he has always been very helpful.

I have used dynel for keel strips at the bow and stern to replace keel strips on a commercial kayak. It is extremely abrasion resistant. I tried to feather in the cured edges with 60-grit and it was impossible by hand, so I went to a 1/4 sheet sander and still had problems. HOWEVER- they are NOT kidding about how much resin it soaks up. It is a ridiculous amount. I put resin on the hull, and then it still took 3-4 coats of resin on the dynel (I was using woven tape that was tubular so that there would be no raw edges) before it was saturated enough to stick to the hull, and then I couldn't squeegee out any excess like we do with glass because the fabric had swollen. It is ore like t-shirt material than fiberglass. I think it would be great for an entire hull ONLY if you could vacuum bag it to ensure that you have a full bond and to control the amount of resin in the laminate. You would definitely need a system capable of a really big pull down from multiple locations, not just a single port, and you'd need pretty slow curing epoxy to make sure that you had time to work. No 205 for sure- probably 206.

Again- I'd contact West and ask them.

m