Re: will pl work for transom
But look at the date on it!
Fiberglass is fibrous glass, glass. Really fancy glass, but still glass by nature. Carbon fiber is a polymer. if the resin splits the carbon fiber, its going to destroy the glass....
"If the resin splits the carbon fiber, its going to destroy the glass...."
You're the first person I've seen on here giving surrealist construction advice. "Leci n'est pas une bateau."
Carbon fiber is not a polymer. Look it up.
And NASA does not heat carbon fiber to "melt it together". The use ovens to cure prepreg fabrics, but so do thousands of other organizations. Not new. The carbon fiber most folks can get for boat work is in fact very different.
The only time anyone I know of has used mat and carbon fiber together in a layup is if the carbon fiber is on the surface and they wanted a "carbon fiber look" for their otherwise weak and heavy part. Burying a layer of CF deep in a transom using poly resin and then layering mat over it makes absolutely zero sense. The transom would be stronger and stiffer if you just stapled two sheets of exterior ply together.
Honeycomb cores for composite panels are never made using carbon fiber, rather the carbon fiber is the skin on a honeycomb core of plastic, aluminum, or nomex.
You shouldn't ever use honeycomb for a load bearing transom. If you want a composite transom core, high density foam is what's used. Honeycomb doesn't have the perfectly even compression strength required for a transom, and drilled or cut holes for anything on the transom, including the engine/sterndrive, would have to be pre-lined with cabosil putty and sealed. Even screw mounting a depth finder would require drillout of a core section and fill with a solid putty. Tons and tons of work, weak result, so no one does it with honeycomb.
Dunno why I typed all this, it's apparent that you're not capable of a technical understanding our responses, much less making coherent statements of your own.
It's been extremely entertaining reading over ondarvr playing this conversation straight. Every time you post something else in response to him you dig your hole a little deeper.
It's good to want to offer people advice on repairs here, but you have to have a deep understanding of the topic. You can learn that here, but you need to read and learn a couple of years, and apply what you learn for some real world experience.
Throwing around buzzwords and hoping to get people to accept you as an "expert" just makes you look really, really stupid.
If you're actually in business doing things as you say, God help your customers.
Erik
PS: To answer the thread's original question: PL will work for laminating the transom, it'll be as strong as poly resin in holding those two pieces of wood together when (if) it fully cures. It needs moisture to cure, so spray water on the wood first. I'd avoid using it to glue the wood to the glass though, really PL is only full strength on porous surfaces like wood.
If you're using poly resin to glass over the transom anyway, just skip the PL and mix some cabosil into the poly to get a thick glue.
If you're using epoxy, you still thicken the glue the same way. Epoxy is a better adhesive though, it's about 10x as strong in adhesion as PL or poly.
If you must have the convenience of a caulk gun applied adhesive, you can get epoxy in tubes like that.
