Salty, what is your problem?
All I did above was respond to Celia to clarify what I’ve said. There’s nothing “pissy” about being accurate or wanting one’s position to be correctly understood, rather than paraphrased by someone else. I addressed her comments and assertions in what I think was a very even-handed way.
Feel free to pass along anything you deem appropriate to Nigel. Tell him he can contact me directly if he wants to, though I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Nothing I’ve said is going to be news to him.
Are you then saying that the boat is
constructed entirely of chopper glass and gelcoat?
Bill
chop strand matt?
Under Standard lay-ups on the NDK website they state that their kayaks are “constructed from chop strand matt, woven cloth and polyester resin”.
Inquiring minds want to know, what is ‘chop strand matt’?
Pamlico 140
Best kayak ever designed!!! All the other kayaks out there should at least copy it!
Or, they should just go away, since they are soooo inferior!
sure, it’s me,
You’re absolutely right.
I’m done now brian, but please continue on ad nauseum til your seratonin level finds a happy place.
Chop Strand Mat
Chop Strand Mat is a general purpose fiberglass reinforcement material. It is composed of chopped fiberglass of various lengths randomly dispersed to provide equal strength in all directions, held together with a chemical binder. The end result is a material that creates good stiffness in products when used alone or in conjuction with other fiberglass fabrics.
thank you (nm)
In the pleasure boat industry, chop
– Last Updated: Nov-21-10 4:06 PM EST –
strand mat is used in the lowest possible quality boats you can buy. Usually smaller work skiffs that are used up and thrown out in a few years. If NDK uses it in proper conjunction with woven cloth, it could be a perfectly fine boat. When used in conjuction with cloth, it will add weight, but also strength and resin for bonding. Not at all high tech, but not the garbage associated with all chop. One thing seems to be certain, whatever they are doing, it seems to work fine for a great many people, including me. Bill
photo?
Would you like a photo, direct from the NDK/SKUK factory?
photo
Let’s see it Ed. Please.
Oh no, you didn’t just go there…
did you?
No, not completely, but close
– Last Updated: Nov-21-10 8:45 PM EST –
All of them that I've worked on had an inner layer of what's basically a loose-weave fabric scrim (I'm not sure of the material) that's more cosmetic than functional. In many cases, it wasn't very well bonded, with lots of resin-starved areas.
Some sections may have a reinforcing layer of chopped strand mat. I've been told that they use it to reinforce decks, but I haven't had to do a deck repair, so I haven't seen that myself. Mat is still a second-rate material, but at least using it guarantees that you'll have a minimum amount of glass in that area, which you don't get with a chopper gun. I should note that one reasonable use of mat is for deck fittings, as it molds to complex curves and shapes better than woven glass cloth does. Many companies use it for that purpose.
What is pretty common is that below the gelcoat, there's a layer of chopper glass that varies in thickness, both from place to place and boat to boat. That was the only structural layer in the hulls, at least in sections I've repaired (keels and chines mostly). Typically, there is considerably more gelcoat than fiberglass, which is the opposite of most of the high-quality hulls I've owned and worked on. On the last NDK boat I repaired - which had a holed keel - there was 3/8"-1/2" of gelcoat along the keel line and I almost couldn't find the glass layer, it was so thin. At first I thought there was no glass at all.
That's a problem with using chopper glass; the thickness of the glass layer is entirely up to the operator of the gun. With glass cloth or even mat, the quantity of glass is well controlled, though the quality of the layup and amount of resin is still up to the operator if it's hand laid. With vacuum bagging and resin infusion, the amount of resin and the compaction of the laminate are well-controlled. It takes skilled operators to do it right, but there isn't much left to chance.
BTW, the use of a chopper gun explains - at least in part - the rather wide variation in weight among individual NDK boats of the same model. At least one would hope that the heavier boats have more glass and not just more gelcoat.
Therein lies the rub
From what I’ve seen in NDK boats, in many cases chopper glass and mat are used alone, except for a cosmetic inner layer.
One other characteristic of mat is that it soaks up a lot of resin, due to the air pockets created by the random strand orientation. That makes for a heavy layup for a given amount of strength in hand-laid boats.
Other questions to ask are:
- What type and weight of cloth and mat?
- Where are they used?
Without some qualification, the statement is pretty meaningless.
I also find it interesting that they don’t mention chopper glass, though visitors to their factory have seen them using it.
chopper guns
There’s another problem with chopper guns, they use a fairly large amount of resin and using polyester means you don’t have alot of time to play with getting it right, it sets up very quickly, 6 or 7 minutes is normal. Glass mat or chopper gun glass uses mostly 1 1/2" to 2" long fibers, can’t get alot of strength with fibers that short. The combination of polyester resin, chopped fibers and too much resin to glass makes for a pretty poor laminate.
I dropped my Greenlander this past spring, chipped a big chunk of gelcoat out and it’s definately very course mat under the gelcoat and not very well attached either. Would have likely done the same damage to a better built boat btw, but less of the gelcoat would have broke loose if the structure didn’t flex like the Greenlander did.
Bill H.
Not trying to start up an argument here
– Last Updated: Nov-22-10 4:31 AM EST –
but I have seen a whole lot of NDK boats that are very well used and old. Many more old NDK boats than any other brand for that matter.
the Explorer that I am borrowing is heavier. I don't think there is much difference if any between a fiberglass tempest and the Explorer that is far older.
Seems to be a very solid boat. Perhaps it is brittle if you drop it and more gelcoat comes off but I don't know.
Regarding quality: Not sure I woudl know much difference or care. I took off the foam from the underside of the coaming and the foam off the seat to buy a quarter inch more room for my fat thighs and it worked really well. I did not feel any rough edges under the coaming on my bare skin and can feel no sharp areas.
I do not have a backband on it preferring a piece of foam that is reassuringy there all the time and looking at the seat, I could see where a backband could pinch if you are not careful.
the sides that have the backband attachment points seem intact, strong, with no wear.
Hatches are bone dry. no really. bone dry. Only boat that I could say that about.
the boat is definitely used, has been used for years as an instructors boat with appropriate scratches all over the deck from pulling too many boats over it to drain, couple of gelcoat patches on the hull from a bit too much abuse and a keel strip that needs sanding down one of these days.
Nice boat. Definitely more comfortable dragging it up a beach than a lightweight beautifully finished kayak. Kinda fun to not have to worry about it and just go paddle.
Paul
Not so on my boat
– Last Updated: Nov-22-10 9:24 AM EST –
Brian indicates above that he has found no structural layer inside the NDK boats he's done outside of chopped mat, if I understand correctly. I may be incorrect on what is officially a structural layer, since I am not a boat builder, but I have a strip of diolen (sp?) running the entire length of the keel. When I lost all my gel coat along the keel for a few inches after dropping my boat on concrete (mt size 6.5 foot fits right thru those darned open spaced concrete sections on loading ramps), you could see it (and in the sun on a bright day). No leaks on the way back, though since I suspected wet diolen is a bad thing I used the Vela until I had the Explorer dry and fixed.
The Elite layups have this at least at the keel and the bow. I'd be quite surprised if this was not also the case in the newer boats like the Pilgrim.
Whatever NDK is doing with the chopped strand on the fore decks, the result is that until the last few years if we were doing rescue sessions where people had to climb around on front decks, we put the NDK and Valley boats out first for the abuse. Subsequently P&H once they changed their distribution policy so they weren't rarer than hen's teeth. That was because the North American boats had a tendency to have their front decks bend in, a lot, and it was one of these sessions on flat water where the deck fittings of a North American boat gave way after having had someone not much bigger than me go across it in a big raft.
That manufacturer has since improved their layups, though frankly the last time we knew anyone who used their boat for a really tough expedition with rocks etc they were provided with a one-up boat that had a tougher layup than what any of us could buy out of the show room. It was a trip that people had made previously with those heavy old crappy NDK boats, mostly without incident.
As to some of the other NA manufacturers, there are still plenty out there making transitional type boats (the "touring" boats) where it's still a good idea to press the deck before having a 220 pound guy crawl over it.
Interestingly, when we ran into guides in Maine earlier on in our paddling, when Current Designs was a common brand to see (around the time of the Andromeda), we often found out that they had ordered their boats with a custom tough layup. It seems that the coast of Maine has a long history of being a cause for custom layups.
As to other manufacturers having reinforcement where you'd like... a friend of ours had a woman hit the stern badly of his used-but-not-ancient Valley Aquanaut in a parking lot maybe 3 years ago. When he went to repair it he found that there was nothing but gel coat back around the skeg area where the biggest damages were. He ended up with a stronger boat than before because he did the fiberglass etc, but as I recall we got some word that this was not a rare situation for that era of boat from Valley. I could name a couple of North American manufacturers where someone went to do a repair and found the same thing, but I don't recall that anyone checked out whether it was a normal thing so I won't name names.
Not to say that Brian hasn't seen the issues he names - of course he has. But I have to wonder about whether his perception is skewed by the fact that he sees NDK boats for repair. His perception of the numbers of bad boats out there may be skewed by the fact that he hasn't seen the boats like the ones we have, and friends of ours, who have NOT had to be sent in for major repair.
They do mention it…
From the SeaKayaking UK web site under the standard layup information. Was pretty easy to find 
The standard kayaks are made of fibre glass and are constructed from chop strand matt, woven cloth and polyester resin. We use a quality control mat and not a chop strand gun to laminate the hull.
two peas in a pod
why start with toyota?
This is a kayaking website.