In Michael Thompson's ad for selling his boat, he said that he was not sure whether his hull was Kevlar or fiberglass.  I was under the impression that all Laser 28's were Kevlar.  Could someone give me a short history of the changes in construction techniques/materials during the production life of the Laser 28.

Thanks.

George Buckingham 

George,

The early boats were all made of kevlar but somewhere along the way a change to fiberglass was made. I don't know at what point this was done, perhaps Bill Layton from this board will chime in with a better answer.

The actual reason it was changed was because of difficulty in 'wetting out' the kevlar properly in the lamination process. It was found the boat could be made equally strong with fiberglass and be easier to make, only it was no longer 'bullet proof'.

The long term experience with these boats shows that there is really no reason to prefer either one over the other from either a performance or longevity perspective.

Hope this helps a bit George.

Cheers,

Thanks, Paul.  That info is very helpful.

Geo

Hi George,

Our supplier of Kevlar at the time was Dupont. In early 1986 the cost of this material doubled overnight... needless to say as a manufacturer we simply couldn't afford such major increases.

We consulted with Bruce Farr and he suggested a new weave of Glass called "S glass". It was recently new to builders and had properties superior to the standard roving that most builders were using at the time. We incorporated this change into the the hulls starting around boat # 200.

All decks however were built with Kevlar because the deck kevlar had a matt stitched to it and was dry loaded into a closed mold and then resin injected. As it turned out, the inventory of the Kevlar for the deck outlasted production.

A couple of points to consider: There was no difference in hull weight using "S glass". Kevlar is yellowish/gold color and can be seen/verified near the hull deck-joint. As Paul mentioned earlier in the thread, there is no obvious performance advantage between older and newer L28's. Hope this helps.

Bill,

Thanks for the quick response and further explanation.  Were there any problems with the Kevlar hulls?

George Buckingham

Thanks for the "generous interior accomodations!"

That is what sold my wife on this great racing/cruising boat. Without the practical interior, I would have been stuck with a traditional leadmine.

Kevlar hull and looking great after a day of bottom painting. Ready for launch later this week .