Plane covering on a boat?

[EVADER09]

The monokote used for planes is spposed to beheat proof up to 200* F and waterproof. I was wondering if you could use that to cover a wood boat instead of painting. Afterall the company (coverite) says that the material is made for wood applications and such.

[thing20]

I have not been into FE boats for very long but I have been into airplanes for awhile and one problem come to my mind.

The problem I see is the fact that even though the producers say the monokote is waterproof and heat resistance the real fact is that unless you get a perfect seal between the monokote and the wood then water will be allowed to soak the wood. This will lead to many nasty things. Not to mention that the monokote will not stick to swollen wood. Airplanes have a problem with this when the engines spit that nasty castor oil onto the side of the airplane. I have seen where seams looked just fine but oil was allowed to seep past and soak the wood leaving a rotted, weakened piece of wood hiding under the monokote.

This is just my opinion though!!

[EVADER09]

Hey thanks any opion is welcome here I can use all the help i can get. I planned on priming the wood at least before I put the monokote on but I'm thing of ging with a prebuilt hull now so I won't even have to do that. thanks

[jtnrumrunner]

I've got some monokote leftovers too, and this darn monokote iron I rarely use! I was thinking of building a cheap swamp buggy, throw one of my old engines on there. Would be interesting to cover it with monokote to see how it holds up.

[EVADER09]

Yeah I can up with the idea a while ago and nobody really told me if it would work or not. If you try it keep me posted how it turns out.

[Larry Benson]

I'm not sure how it will hold up on wood but I just built a XL Cat from Jay Turner plans and the article suggested covering the foam sponsons with monocote . it does a great job so I don't see why it wouldn't work on wood I use to do my planes that way and never had much trouble (only what I caused myself) LOL

[AndyKunz]

It works.

Just make sure that you cover the boat from back to front, top to bottom. This will help keep the water drag from peeling the covering off.

Andy

[EVADER09]

I planned on making the bottum one whole peice and such. Its not like I'm going to use 2 in. by 2 in. tiny squares, I'm gunna cover as much as i can in one big peice and the rest biggest peices as possible. No offense andy but thats kind of common sense. If the wind doesn't rip it off a plane going 50 mph then the water shouldn't take it of a 30 mph boat.

[AndyKunz]

No offense taken. The problem with common sense is that it's so rare ;)

Water is 800 times denser. 30 MPH in the water is a lot harder on the adhesive than 50 in the air.

What do you fly? Here are a few pictures of some of my toys. I have to get more posted. www.users.fast.net/~montana/planes

Andy

[thing20]

To go with the other common sense comment I would like to make one more. When and if you go to coat the boat in monokote there are some things you can do to make sure to get a good bond. First of all use a tack cloth and go over the whole boat to get all of the dust off the wood. Second of all there is a wood prep called balsarite from coverite. It will make the monokote stick like glue. I'm not sure how much weight it will add but from the sounds of it you arn't looking for all out speed.

[EVADER09]

Andy, I don't fly that's why I didn't know that. I'm only into cars and trucks and now getting into boats. I'm putting my rigger on hold right now cause I'm getting an EV and thought that would be better to start w/ instead of making one at my ameture level in boating. Thanks for the thing20 and andy.