Plant Shuttered, Doors Closed.

[BOAT]

Haha I laugh at California. They are worried about voc what about the 4643468732678 cars driving on the roads every day?
the next thing for boating will be cheap carbon and epoxy construction. Light and strong. Everything will be made from this. Cars tools even building parts. Think about a car top dinghy that weighs 30 pounds. Our glass boats will seem as quaint and old fashioned as planked wooden boats do today.
Ix

Yes, this is total prophecy here by Ix - very insightful - it's all about votes and money like Kevin said: Every one of those "4643468732678" cars is a VOTE, and Roger MacGregor is only ONE VOTE. It's like I said, they pass a law for LA and make it cover ALL of California - then it spreads to New England States, then NY, PA, NJ, MD, DE, DC, ME, CT, NH, RI, VA, and starting this year MA and VT, and starting NEXT year most of the Midwest states. It's already spreading to the gulf as more and more tree huggers move into the area and become active because of BP and stuff (They see $$dollar $igns $$).

And the talk about carbon is exactly what Roger was saying since the 1990's - Even the Tesla car that is so popular down here switched to an aluminum body from fiber and composites because the metal is still cheaper. Not sure when the new carbons and epoxys will be cheap enough to use.

Our glass boats will seem as quaint and old fashioned as planked wooden boats do today.

YES! Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.

Who wants to be a boat builder with all their millions stuck in fiberglass when that happens, huh? Not me.

[Phil M]

Haha I laugh at California. They are worried about voc what about the 4643468732678 cars driving on the roads every day?
the next thing for boating will be cheap carbon and epoxy construction. Light and strong. Everything will be made from this. Cars tools even building parts. Think about a car top dinghy that weighs 30 pounds. Our glass boats will seem as quaint and old fashioned as planked wooden boats do today.
Ix

However, fiberglass can be repaired almost anywhere. Some new space-age carbon superstrength material is going to repaired how? At the factory? Somewhere in the Far East like China?

[BOAT]

However, fiberglass can be repaired almost anywhere. Some new space-age carbon superstrength material is going to repaired how? At the factory? Somewhere in the Far East like China?

If Fiberglass is illegal would it matter? If the VOC laws say you can't use it in the first place what's the point?

I think a really good bit of research that would be helpful in this discussion would be to see where all the other fiberglass boats are built - all our power boat friends (they out number us, right?) I will check in with Bayliner and SeaRay and see what their plans are. All fiberglass boats are built in GA, Tenn, Fl, and in the south somewhere, right? What happens to the fiberglass boat industry if a new material is found??

Anyone know that? I would think that almost ALL the fiberglass boat companies are in the south now, right? They MUST have had SOME kind of thoughts about the future? Or do they just assume that fiberglass will be the material for the next 20 years?? I would like to know what all those boat manufacturer presidents in the south think - they MUST have SOME idea what a new material would mean to them??

What would happen to the boat industry if there were no VOC's in the process?? At that point it's just price, right?

My impression is that it's okay to produce all the VOC's you want in the south, and therefore all the Fiberglass boats will eventually all be built there (if not already). That's gives them a pretty good lock on the industry as long as all the other states are outlawing VOCs. What happens if someone comes up with a material that has no VOCs?

[Russ]

It's like I said, they pass a law for LA and make it cover ALL of California - then it spreads to New England States, then NY, PA, NJ, MD, DE, DC, ME, CT, NH, RI, VA, and starting this year MA and VT, and starting NEXT year most of the Midwest states. It's already spreading to the gulf as more and more tree huggers move into the area and become active because of BP and stuff (They see $$dollar $igns $$).

I think you are looking in the right direction. Those states have both the environmental will to ban VOCs and the polluted cities to justify it. But it won't go nationwide for a long time. As mentioned above, there still is Texas, a state at the end of that list. My state has no motor vehicle inspection requirements. There are states with fewer regulations. I think you have a good 20+ years of glass before Texas (and TN, FL, GA) jump onto the VOC ban bandwagon. And if Texas caves, then there is always Brasil. Bayliner is moving operations there. Mexico?

I think a really good bit of research that would be helpful in this discussion would be to see where all the other fiberglass boats are built - all our power boat friends (they out number us, right?) I will check in with Bayliner and SeaRay and see what their plans are. All fiberglass boats are built in GA, Tenn, Fl, and in the south somewhere, right? What happens to the fiberglass boat industry if a new material is found??

Again, I think you are looking in the right direction.
Passing VOC laws is nice, but not at the cost of thousands of fiberglass jobs. These states are thirsty for industry and jobs and aren't smog filled. So I don't see their legislators committing political suicide to pass laws that would kills thousands of jobs to solve a pollution problem that doesn't exist. But who knows. Politicians do some pretty stupid things.

Now if a better product exists, say carbon or whatever, and it has other benefits, like superlightweight, then the industry might move that way. However, as mentioned, if repairing a carbon boat means sending it off for expensive repairs, that might keep buyers from moving to it.
Right now, I see epoxy and carbon as building materials for the superyachts and millionaires club. They may win America's Cup races, but you can't sell many 26' boats at $200k. That was part of the brilliance of Roger's business model. Advertise a lot of boat for under $23k.

As you have suggested, I would be very interested in what Hunter, SeaRay, Bayliner are doing. Macgregor's 1 boat per day production was nothing compared to what these guys are building.

Fiberglass put the wooden boat building industry out of business virtually overnight. Maybe there is a new product that will do the same for glass.

--Russ

[BOAT]

Fiberglass put the wooden boat building industry out of business virtually overnight. Maybe there is a new product that will do the same for glass.

This is exactly what Alter and Grubby's family told me here in Oceanside (they build the Hobie Cats and boats here) and they said it's always on the back of their mind and they don't want to be the ones to lay off 250 people in a matter of three months. Even Chris Craft is in Sarasota now, right??? I'm pretty sure they were bough out by some big VC interest back in the 80's I think because Michigan ran them out of town when they changed to fiberglass.

This deal with Fiberglass boats moving to the south has been going on for a long time, and California was not the first to start the regulations.

It's a scary future - I myself would not invest one dime in a fiberglass boat company. Too risky in these times.

[RobertB]

I still want to stress, there are no laws that outlaw fiberglass - fiberglass is an inert material. What is really the subject of discussion is the resins used with the fiberglass - or the Kevlar, or the carbon fiber, or the plywood, or the wood cold molded construction. The state of the art is and has been for a long time evolving in regards to the resins. VOC laws, again I stress these apply to the resins, not the fiberglass structural component, will be reformulated to be compatible with the legislation. This happened with air conditioning refrigerant, paint, thinners, degreasers, and any number of other industrial materials. I really do not see how VOC laws will stop boatbuilding in the USA.

I am a glass is half full kind of guy

[Johnacuda]

I still want to stress, there are no laws that outlaw fiberglass - fiberglass is an inert material. What is really the subject of discussion is the resins used with the fiberglass - or the Kevlar, or the carbon fiber, or the plywood, or the wood cold molded construction. The state of the art is and has been for a long time evolving in regards to the resins. VOC laws, again I stress these apply to the resins, not the fiberglass structural component, will be reformulated to be compatible with the legislation. This happened with air conditioning refrigerant, paint, thinners, degreasers, and any number of other industrial materials. I really do not see how VOC laws will stop boatbuilding in the USA.

I am a glass is half full kind of guy

Oh, for the days when you could use carbon tetrachloride on a rag to clean a surface that was about to be glued.
I remember my high-school chemistry book had a picture of a mouse being held under the surface of an oxygenated carbon tetrachloride solution. The solution was oxygen saturated to the point where the mouse could live, and when it was pulled out, the carbon tet flashed off quick enough to keep the mouse from drowning. Pre-PETA, when no-one cared if a mouse got cancer.

[RobertB]

Oh, for the days when you could use carbon tetrachloride on a rag to clean a surface that was about to be glued.
I remember my high-school chemistry book had a picture of a mouse being held under the surface of an oxygenated carbon tetrachloride solution. The solution was oxygen saturated to the point where the mouse could live, and when it was pulled out, the carbon tet flashed off quick enough to keep the mouse from drowning. Pre-PETA, when no-one cared if a mouse got cancer.

Oh, that is so awesome - please post a scan if you have it.
I remember the time where at the F-16 plant all metal surfaces were repeatedly cleaned using squeeze bottles of freon. Then we went on the environmentally friendly kick and pioneered all kinds of processes where we even painted the planes with water based paint (at the same time, old timers were being interviewed on where all the barrels of toxic industrial materials were buried).

[BOAT]

We used raw trichloralethylene-3-3-3 To clean film negative before processing when i was a kid working in a photo processor lab at 16. And in the dark room where we hung the film strips to go into the tanks they were full of sulfuric acid and formaldehyde. We were in those rooms for 5 hours straight with no light at all after the Christmas Holidays because there was so much picture business during those times.

Now only Florida kids get to breath that stuff. They don't let California kids do it anymore.

[RobertB]

We used raw trichloralethylene-3-3-3 To clean film negative before processing when i was a kid working in a photo processor lab at 16. And in the dark room where we hung the film strips to go into the tanks they were full of sulfuric acid and formaldehyde. We were in those rooms for 5 hours straight with no light at all after the Christmas Holidays because there was so much picture business during those times.

Now only Florida kids get to breath that stuff. They don't let California kids do it anymore.

I guess Florida kids today are just plain tougher than California kids - and probably more likely to have more toes too.

[kmclemore]

Oh, for the days when you could use carbon tetrachloride...

... all metal surfaces were repeatedly cleaned using squeeze bottles of freon...

And the amusing part? I still have both of those chemicals in my shop. I use them *very* judiciously and keep them in labelled, tightly-sealed glass lab bottles in my chemicals cabinet. Sometimes there's just no substitute.

[Johnacuda]

Oh, for the days when you could use carbon tetrachloride on a rag to clean a surface that was about to be glued.
I remember my high-school chemistry book had a picture of a mouse being held under the surface of an oxygenated carbon tetrachloride solution. The solution was oxygen saturated to the point where the mouse could live, and when it was pulled out, the carbon tet flashed off quick enough to keep the mouse from drowning. Pre-PETA, when no-one cared if a mouse got cancer.

Oh, that is so awesome - please post a scan if you have it.
I remember the time where at the F-16 plant all metal surfaces were repeatedly cleaned using squeeze bottles of freon. Then we went on the environmentally friendly kick and pioneered all kinds of processes where we even painted the planes with water based paint (at the same time, old timers were being interviewed on where all the barrels of toxic industrial materials were buried).

http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comme ... ter_mouse/
I was wrong, it was a 1966 experiment with oxygenated freon, not carbon tet.
even further off-topic, didn't the original flash-freezing process involve conveyor belts and an open vat of freon?

[Ixneigh]

in regards to the expence of carbon and things like that, sure it is a valid point. But, back in the day, a good wooden boat was still pretty expensive by the standards of that era. AND they required skilled maintenance. And no matter how much maintenance was provided they still self destructed after a few decades. Even shoddily built glass boats will last for...? if it isnt terribly abused. There are perfectly good sailboats being crushed here in FL just because no one wants to fix them up. They are dirty, need paint, or covered with bird poo, but few are structerally unsound. There was a little V22 washed up on the riprap near where I live. It sat for months before finally giving up the ghost. This feature of glass, combined with semiskilled instead of highly skilled labor to build, helped drive the price of a glass boat lower. Used boats were and are cheap. Once the glut of used boats is gone, and a new boat costs 80,000 because its made from more expensive, non voc materials, there will be no more cheap boats. that is especially true of boats that can be stored in your yard. it might become cost effective to rehab older boats again. Imagine a shop making a Mac 25 look like new again, including rehabbing the keel, ect. A boat like that could last another 40-50 years and for maybe a third of what a new boat would cost.
Ix

[Divecoz]

WOW!!! The Way Back Time Machine!!! Carbon Tet.. Yep we used it a LOT!! I was a certified High Voltage Splicer 13KVAC.. Often I was in a concrete vessel , below ground that was about 8'x10'x8'.. EVERYTHING I touched was washed!! Multiple times during the process with Carbon Tet.. Oh yea we had a fan or even fans, but we had to be breathing that stuff..hahaha wth were we thinking?????????

[raycarlson]

Come on now, Even in LA polyester resin isn't banned. Even Macg was allowed to build one boat a day. I know that on my trains I am still sending 20K gallon tank cars into the LA basin businesses. Don't know where this banned rumour got started, yes the fumes are more tightly regulated, but nothing is banned in LA. And for the carbon fiber issue, anyone who can do fiberglass repair can do a carbon fiber repair, it just looks more complicated than it is because they like to use pre-empregnated fiber rolls which need to be refrigerated, and then vacuum bag the repair to suck out all excess resin. But it can be done exactly the same as polyester if youd like. the same illegal aliens building boats out of f/g will be building out of carbon no problem, its not that difficult.