I was wondering if anyone has any personal experience or knowledge of Swift’s new infused laminates? Are these all full or partial foam core? Are the weights credible? Duribility? Infused gunnels?I don’t want to get prople started on their quality/service gripes!
Turtle
Swift
– Last Updated: Nov-13-10 11:10 AM EST –
The infused layups look great. Perfect ratio of resin to fabric. Yes, they do have some core material. On the kayaks it looks like a honeycomb pattern, on decks and in hull. Haven't inspected the canoes that much, but have looked at one with the infused gunwales at my local shop. Swift learned the infused gunnel process form Placid Boatworks. The one I have seen looks great, but I have heard through the grapevine that they can get a little rough with abuse over time. That would make sense as they are a carbon/kevlar weave, so if the gunwale gets beat up the kevlar may fuzz a bit.
Regarding the weights, they are quite accurate. Most likely within a pound. Swift weighs each boat before it leaves the factory. I had a kayak come in 1 lb. over, but it was a hand layup, before they started using the infusion process. Obviously, any boat that has some wood in it would vary a bit.
bottom core
Swift uses a perforated foam bottom core and shaped, perforated foam inside braided carbon/ Kev fabric tube for their integral rails.
All components are placed in the mold, a vacuum drawn and the hull, core and rails infuse in under 20 minutes.
One of the great advantages of infusion is that the same laminate schedule in the same mold takes exactly the same amount of resin every time so weights vary very little, and voids, rather common in hand lamination, are completely eliminated.
The foam core bottoms hold up for livery use in Algonquin Park, so enough said there!
You could …
actually finish a beer or two waiting for that, unlike the Spitfire where you would have to chug - what was that 4 minutes?
Shearwater
As you know, hubby’s canoe was made using Swift’s new process. He is very satisfied with the boat. Did you want to look it over sometime?
Yeah
Smaller boat; different resin and promotion chemistry