i am not 100% sure but i believe you can only violate a patent if you do it for sale… and i say screw fcs anyway, they wouldn’t sell me plugs to do ding repairs and told me to take my boards to a “certified” repair shop… i only installed a few hunded fin sets when i was working at a glass shop…
Blakestah
These patents suck,how the hell do you get a patent for doing what boatbuilders have been doing for years.
Its the same with patents for fin boxs,all of them are rectangular posts in matching holes
Its been used since for ever from locating and holding a fence post to a table leg
I just hope that these greedy suckers make enough money to pay the nurse when they are old and pissing their pants !
Quote:
Blakestah These patents suck,how the hell do you get a patent for doing what boatbuilders have been doing for years.Its the same with patents for fin boxs,all of them are rectangular posts in matching holes Its been used since for ever from locating and holding a fence post to a table leg
I just hope that these greedy suckers make enough money to pay the nurse when they are old and pissing their pants !
Sorry I brought it up. Patents are a very important part of the business end. The backyarder doesn’t need to think of them until he decides to sell his work. I find them somewhat interesting…especially in this case. FCS established, earlier than most, an easy method to use both decks to strengthen a fin plug mount. Just make a little hole from the bottom of the plug hole to the deck, and fill it with a resin and/or reinforcing agent. Another fin company patented making a hole through the board, including both decks, and putting a finbox in that hole, and filling the rest of the hole with resin.
If you work out the stresses on a fin plug, and the strength of the foam and glass, you’ll see the obvious and significant advantage of using both decks. Or, you can find some broken boards and see how easy it is to delam a fin plug not mounted through to the top deck, and how tough it is to hurt a well-installed FCS plug. It is good engineering, and I appreciate that. I also worked out, some time ago, that something as simple as using a wooden dowel in the hole would work-around the FCS patent, and in addition be lighter and stronger…but no patent involved. I do this when I install fin boxes that are not FCS or Red-X anyway…
Those are the only two fin companies using both decks to reinforce their finboxes/fin plugs - FCS and Red-X. The others use large glass-over lips to get more strength out of one deck.