Some of you guys are dinosaurs like me…yeah, part of the “older I get, the better I was” club.
Anyway, i was wondering if any of you ever worked with MPV (Modified Poly Vinyl) as a reinforcement in combination with fiberglass.
This stuff was pretty incredible and we were using 4 oz (or 6) to veil over the MPV layer when glassing. It was kinda of a PITA (pain in the ass) if your factory was subject to a breeze or if you even sneezed the material would like to slide off the blank…once you had the cloth over it and cut and in place it was no biggie.
MPV had very impressive impact strength. Yater used it for awhile on his boards, and a friend of mine had his board fly off his car and he saw it thru his rear view mirror land on the nose or tail. To his amazement, when he surveyed the damage he said damage was almost minimal…couldn’t believe it…foam hadn’t been compromised…just fractures in the glass/MPV layers!
I think Clyde (Beatty) was the one who got his hands on it first…told me he was at Disneyland on “Pirates of the Carribbean” and he was checking out the boats. He said the things hit each other at the end of the ride and while loading/unloading people and they held up really well. Upon inquiry Disney folks told him what the material was.
The source for getting it dried up after just a short while. The word we got was the material was being bought up fo shoe manufacture in Korea…couldn’t find it after that…that seems like a strange story and reason for its lack of availability.
So, I wonder if anyone else ever used Modified Polyvinyl and what your take is on it?
Len from Shapers Australia recently showed me a board that was laminated with a nylon type cloth, I wonder if this is the same stuff you are talking about. Looks just like plain weave but its a plastic.
Both the samples and the board were as hard as a rock, it seemed to trap a bit of air under the weave, but maybe this was just the guy who lammed the board.
If this is the stuff you mentioned Len has it, and its pretty cheap too.
Could be it…stuff is vinyl so nylon fits the bill, the mesh was fine, compared to 4 oz cloth weave…probably equivalent to 1 or 2 oz. which of course would want to trap air and have to be carefully worked from center out to get air from being trapped. If you sanded into it it burred up and was a bitch…you had to use fine sand paper to get it down or cloth back over before glossing.
When you say fairly cheap what are we talking in Aussie dollars per yard. And I imagine you measure metric not yard, right? What’s a metre? 3.2 feet per yd.? I forget…thanks.
And…well, yeah the glass jobs did feel “rock hard”…which if your guy has been using this for awhile ask him what the feedback is, how the weight feels comparable to ‘typical’ glassing configs’ and what is the 'name he gets it by? Also what glass is he combining with it? I doubt he is using a straight layup of this w/out anything else.
I thank you in advance for any answers you can impart on this.
“I don’t take anybody else’s crap except from you”!
I spoke to Len this morning and he said a few guys on your side of the pond have been using it. He didn’t know what it was called and couldn’t give me a definite price on it but said he would send me a sample to try out.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Maybe you could ask around locally if anyone’s been using it.
Thanks for the follow up…I can research some of the aerospace type suppliers and such…some of those companies are more likely to distribute the synthetics and exotics.
Thanks again…it’s always good to look for ‘new’ directions…
I herd of a carbon/Zylon (black and orange) cloth, is use in bullet proof vests, very strong and flexy… sounds great but its $21 us/ft. pretty full on $. any one used it?
Never heard a peep…the stuff you mentioned sounds good…actually the price isn’t bad if you look @ carbon at around $35/yd. Do you know anything about Syntex? I stumbled across this in an older thread.
huie…screw the spelling the report is worth its weight in gold. Thanks a bunch mate!
Hare Krishna,er, I mean Merry Christmas!!!
P.S. The stuff wets out clear as I recall…yes?
Just another thought…try to find the name of the disributor or supplier if they’ll give it to you…you can PM the name or email of the company to me and I’ll ask them from here. Thanks again and merry merry and happy happy. If you ever see Greenough down there tell him I said to say hi.
Huie…did you use a regular hammer or a rubber mallet? I’d think a mallet would simulate the board bouncing off bigger cobblestone rocks where the sharp edge of a regular hammer (unless it had the rounded head of one for drywall) would be considerably harsher.
Either way, he stuff is tough, yes?!
And as far as using it in conjunction with epoxy, we never did that as it was about 25 years ago. As you know, epoxies generally bond to a wider variety of materials than polys. Keep us posted.
i,m picking some up from Len at shapers tomorrow, He said they have some new improved stuff thats more pores and user friendly. I’l post a price list tomorrow.
Got a sample from Shapers about a week ago. Haven’t tried it yet but it looks interesting. Weave looks a lot tighter than e, so poly may be a no go. Nice and white and doesn’t feel too stiff to the touch. I received a four ounce sample by the way. I’m thinking of going the way of one layer of nylon underneath with one layer of e on top to lap to the other side.
D…4 0z sample? The stuff I remember was a lot finer mesh…and it was used with polester resin w/out a problem…this was back in the late 70’s…before tri fins I think (when was that '79?)
I’ve been trying to source this out and when I put Modified Polyvinyl into the browsers I get references to pharmaceuticals (dugs)… or sizings, using an alcohol base. Trying to link it to fabric has been a no go. I personally think the stuff is nylon…I even remember it feeling like nylon and that would explain it’s slippery traits.
The other stuff I’m trying to get some info on is called “Impact glass”…s’posedly stronger and 30% lighter laminates.
Ya know, the whole reason for looking at this stuff is to be able to create very strong lightweight customs that aren’t a lot weaker from the so called ‘superior’ sandwich construction boards. There’s marvelous stuff out there available for the getting. Sure the sandwich constuction is cheaper production (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), but if we create one-off beautiful and very strong customs in a short period of time, that is our best response/weapon against the mass producers…DURABLE FERRARIS.
the stuff huie and yorky have is not MPV. it looks like polyethelyne or the kind of stuff that crop farmers use as frost cloth. i will post pics of a board and close ups in the next few days when i get time.
thanks feral…right on, maintain the stoke for life. What’s a life w/out passion, eh? Just going thru the motions I’d say.
Yep, there’s some interesting stuff that can yield some big gains other than the usual suspects; e glass, s glass and the like. It’s a good time (always a good time) to think out of the box.
I saw a really interesting comparison of epoxy and vinylester molecules…the epoxy came out on top although vinylester is a very strong resin. It’s very revealing though, when you start looking at it from a molecular perspective.
