JEM Watercraft

I'm building the DK Touring canoe and will be starting to stitch it together soon, so its time to order some epoxy.

I know nothing about epoxy and am impressed by the wide price differences between brands. So far I am leaning toward the Marinepoxy from Duckworks, primarily because its the cheapest and because their website is the nicest. Both dumb reasons I know, but when all epoxy looks the same you gotta decide somehow.

So what is the difference between them? Is the cheaper stuff ok or is it worth it to spend $50 more?

The other question I have is about wood flour. The wood shop where I work has tons of doug-fir sawdust from the table saws and such. Is that ok to use for the "pookie"? Should I buy wood flour instead? Can I make it out of scrap stuff I have lying around?

(btw, thanks for the free plans, I'm really enjoying the build. My wife caught me the other night looking at kayak plans. "you haven't even finished the family canoe and you're already thinking about building a solo boat?" )

Duck Work's are good folks. Marine Epoxy brand gets the job done ok from what I've heard but I've never used it.

I've personally used from these sources and got great results:

http://www.raka.com and http://www.uscomposites.com

Duck Works also sells System Three which is nice stuff, although more expensive.

vote for uscomposites
ron

I've had great service from both http://www.uscomposites.com/
http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/.

Can't go wrong with either, take your pick.

Duckworks has a more comprehensive product line for other boat building stuff.

MM

I vote for Raka I have built 9 boats with their epoxy and no problems yet. Don't know why you cant use fir sawdust for fillets. Just need to have it well sifted so you have flower and not wood chunks.

Don't think I want to sift it. I'm already dealing with fall allergies

I see that wood flour is sold in quarts. The plans say I need two pounds. Any idea what the conversion is?

(I went with US Composites)

I need to update if it says 2 pounds of wood flour. A couple quarts should be plenty.

Anybody here tried RAKA's 350 non-blush hardener?
Is it fast, slow, medium?

Thanks
Les

All of my boats were made with Rakas Epoxy and it was the non blush epoxy. I would order in the slow and the fast hardner and then mix them for a medium hardener.
Not familiar with the 350 , he has changed the numbers and names of his epoxy's in the recent years and I have not ordered any from him since I still have a fair amount left over from the last boat.

I would suggest calling him , he will talk with you and you can explain what you want to do and then he can suggest what would be the best for you.

Chuck.....

Thanks Chuck.

since posting my question I have read several places that RAKA's 350 hardener is a slow one, for me that would be on the plus side for fiberglass wetting and filling. Maybe for filleting too. Might want a bit of a faster mix for some of the other work like inital stage tacking, or glueing things like gunnels, spacers, cleats, etc. I will ask at RAKA whter the 350 hardener can be mixed with a faster hardener the way their 610 fast and 606 slow can be mixed. (and now they got a 608 medium too.)
Probably it might be good to always have a little of the fast hardener on hand I don't know. But seems like to me a slower hardener would be good for lots of reasons, like initial penetration of bare wood to keep the resin thin longer, and the obvious one of longer time to work with it. I have never been accused of being a fast worker.