Best price for epoxy in bulk?

Kelpie

Kelpie

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I'm toying with the idea of building a stitch-and-glue nesting dinghy.
The 20+ litres of epoxy required looks like the single biggest cost (I'm not planning on using Robbins elite ply for a knockabout dinghy).

So far the best price I have found for suitable epoxy is SP106 at £175 per 11.8kg pack. Two of these would be plenty, with some left over. It's a fair chunk of money though.

Does anybody know of a better price than this?
 
Looks a good price. Is this for solvent free epoxy which is worth having for the health benefits? I like Fyne boats so;vent free as catylist is 2:1 ratio so easier to get dead right also not too quick to harden off so not such a rush, but that comes out about £17/kg rather than your £13.5.
 
lw395 said:
20kg just for the resin?
Is it a dinghy or a destroyer?
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destroyer dinghy most likely :D

I used approx 60lt of epoxy during my 43ft ply mobo rebuilt over a period of 4yrs.
20lt seems a bit much, no?
I've used a local co which is strangely selling 95% of its wares abroad. Have a look maybe interesting
www.fibermaxcomposites.com

cheers

V.
 
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It does seem like an awful lot of epoxy, I agree! Just going by the bill of materials from the designer.
 
I’m doing a Fyne boats ‘FyneFour’ 13ft ‘clinker’ stitch and glue dinghy kit and apparently 10 LG’s of resin should be ‘plenty’. We’ll see.
 
vas said:
I've used a local co which is strangely selling 95% of its wares abroad. Have a look maybe interesting
www.fibermaxcomposites.com
Click to expand...

Interesting indeed, thanks. Their '481 cost performance' epoxy comes out at about £9.19/kg in the quantities I need. Does anybody have experience of using it?

EDIT: but they want €225 for delivery... which puts them somewhat out of contention!
 
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why not use vinylester? much cheaper. Not as strong as epoxy, but if it's good enough for almost all yachts, it should be good enough to build a dinghy.
 
De.windhoos said:
why not use vinylester? much cheaper. Not as strong as epoxy, but if it's good enough for almost all yachts, it should be good enough to build a dinghy.
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Yachts are made from a layup of resin and glass, in which the resin only has to bond to itself. This is why polyester works. I don't know much about vinylester but I would presume it has similar properties.
Epoxy sticks not just to itself but also to lots of other things. In a stitch and glue dinghy the epoxy is there for bonding the glass tape over the joints in the plywood, and for building up fillets. As this means adhering to different materials, not just the resin/glass itself, epoxy seems to be the firm favourite.
 
Planning on building a stitch and glue kayak. The quantity of epoxy did seam excessive until I realized I have to completely waterproof the ply inside and out.
Many many years ago, my dad and I had a cunning plan for an old clinker boat we used for .
We got some fibre glass and resin, covered the bottom of it, on the outside.
Worked great for one season.

In the end I bought a used rental kayak, was cheaper and I didn’t have to mess with epoxy which I don’t really like.

Just an observation, epoxy resin is covered by DG regs. Small consumer quantities get exemptions from the some of the restrictions and can be delivered to your local hardware store in its regular delivery truck. The big buckets not so much.
Might be why delivery cost is a bit high.
 
I recently built a Danny Green Chameleon but only managed to use about 65% of the epoxy on the materials list.
I should have bought 1/2 of the epoxy (from East Coast Fiberglass supplies) then the rest after the first lot was finished.
Ive now got a load of epoxy way past its use by date.

Plank
 
PlankWalker said:
I recently built a Danny Green Chameleon but only managed to use about 65% of the epoxy on the materials list.
I should have bought 1/2 of the epoxy (from East Coast Fiberglass supplies) then the rest after the first lot was finished.
Ive now got a load of epoxy way past its use by date.

Plank
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That's pretty much my gut feeling too. 20kg of epoxy seems a huge amount for a boat with a finished weight of less than 40kg.
The Chameleon is one of the designs I'm considering, although I'm leaning towards the B&B Spindrift as well.
 
I built a 15ft clinker ply Oughtred design and IIRR used about 8kg of resin. That includes birdsmouth spars and foils. Whole boat was glued, no fasteners apart from the fittings. Used Resoltec products and an electronic kitchen scale. After that, I was gifted a 200lt drum of resin + different speed hardeners, so not short on the current build :).

As for being past it's use by date, they don't mean much. Several people I have chatted to have tested stuff and found it works fine at 10yrs or so.
 
I sheathed a Stella back in 1999 & used £3.5K of West epoxy gear. I bought it all from Wessex resins who were cheaper than all the other suppliers. in addition their rep made frequent visits to my factory to advise on the work processes.
As for waterproofing the inside; this is important. I did not use epoxy resin, but a very thin resin. I forget what it was called but was a bit like water to apply. So it was easy to just brush on. (apart from the seriously dodgy fumes). It had "seeking"properties. A bit like antifreeze does when one has a bad joint in ones car water system. It found all the worm holes etc. in the old timbers. ( yes!! Tucker Brown had used timber with worm holes in it!!)It also soaked in round the multitude of loose fastenings.
It seals the inside, soaks into the wood & forms a hard crystalline surface.
Well worth the OP researching its name as it would save a lot of work & do the job very well.
 
Kelpie said:
Does water-based mean you can rinse out your brushes etc with warm water? Seems quite a big advantage.
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yep, with solvent based, you practically throw away the kit you've used each day :D [hopefully only rollers, but if you use any brush, forget about reusing it]
 
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