Laminating a Bulkhead Penetration with a 3D-Printed Plug Every hole through a structural bulkhead is a weak point unless it’s reinforced properly — and reinforcing it properly starts with a plug that comes back out again. Matching laminate to the surrounding skin The basic rule for reinforcing a penetration is straightforward: match the laminate going
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Penetrating a Structural Bulkhead the Right Way Every wire, hose, and pipe that needs to cross a bulkhead has to pass through it somehow — and how that hole gets made and finished is the difference between a boat that holds up for decades and one that develops a serious structural problem. Why a Hole
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Vacuum Bagging Polyester Resin: What Most People Get Wrong Building a small non-structural bunk-front panel became the excuse for a genuinely detailed look at vacuum bagging polyester resin — a material that behaves differently enough from epoxy under vacuum that getting it wrong is easy, and getting it right takes a few tricks most people
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This one’s for members Our members library is where the real work lives: original technical content from the people who did the work, using materials and methods from the highest levels of the sport. Inside our Membership Site: Extended video walkthroughs from Paikea’s refit and our professional jobs New members videos uploaded regularly Downloads and
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How to Bolt into Carbon Fibre: Threaded Inserts vs. Helicoils Mounting a Clark pump for the watermaker onto a bulkhead sounds like a small job. Getting the threading right underneath it is where the actual engineering happens. Why bolting into composite matters The plan here is straightforward on the surface: carbon plates bonded to the
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Sealing Leaky Windows Properly Paikea’s windows are quintessential Catana — curved, space-age looking, and about as impractical and expensive to replace as boat windows get. On a modest cruising budget, new windows were never really on the table. So the job became fixing what we had rather than replacing it. The crazing in the perspex
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