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not saying anything is "wrong" with wood,as a core-but-wood needs to be kept dry-water,especially fresh water is the enemy-dry rotting/delamination...
working outside-how do you keep everything dry ?
i read someone recomend polyester based resin-not the best choice for working with glass and wood-polyester resins only provide a surface bond,also,the polyester resins are not waterproof.
i'm just surprised to see no one using divinycell-it's very easy to work with...i work with these products every day-i've replaced enough rotted transoms,decks,stringers,bulkheads-hard tops with a balsa core,to see the damage water intrusion can cause...
the pilot house i build,will be from composite material-bagged-i've worked with enough composites,at my shop,to be a firm believer in the technology...
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I have about 15 years of experience with wooden skiffs that suggests you are wrong about "need to keep ply dry"... you just need to keep it painted or oiled. I think balsa and ply are more different than ply versus any of the fancy expensive cores. Sadly, lowes does not carry divinycell, but as soon as they do I will pick some up and see how it goes! I pay about $30 for a sheet of arauco. I do have to pick through the pile to find good sheets with no voids, but how much does a 4x8 of your stuff go for?
I had heard the same thing about poly on wood, but Ed Anderson swears by it and has done some great boats with it. He says the key is to make sure you rough up the surface of the ply (36 grit) and then make sure a barrier coat (i.e. any decent epoxy or LPU paint) goes on over. My understanding is that the load baring is done by the glass... the ply or whatever you use for core just needs to not compress. Lots of great coldmolded boats out there... like that 40 freeman on hull truth. Yes I know epoxy not poly.
I guess my other thing about the fancy core materials... epoxy is only made by like 3 different chemical companies. All the different brands you see (and different prices) come from some tweaking after the fact, but for the most part, the price difference is the result of different business models not different products. I would rather pay $43/gallon and have to deal with the epoxy products website than pay $80/gallon for west systems to build special epoxy product stands in every west marine across the country. My point is... I wonder how much hype is behind this new stuff.
Outside - combination of tarps, sheds, and basement.