A GU-Kan lll Condo

[zennzzo]

After a dozen years in the Comercial Dungeness crabbing business, one gets to thinking about all the tons and tons of live crab I have haulled all over the ocean in the great pacific northwest.

If there is one thing I have learned, to stay alive and deliver your catch to dry land, you must keep the tanks or holds full of water or product. Any breech into the holds could mean sudden disaster.

In the words of a wise old world Sicillian fisherman:
You no tippy da boat ova, ifa you no breaka da tank


And with those words to guide me along, I got into keeping the tanks on the vessels I have worked on, in MINT condition.

That afforded me some insight into modern laminated foam core construction.

All that means is by building the basic tank out of a closed-cell foam board, with a thickness of .500" and then laminating or hand-laying the epoxy resin over an Arimid fiber like Kevlar...

One should be able to produce a very nicely finnished tank in which a 24" x 96" x .500" pannel of Plexi can be fitted to the front...

Keep tunning in for the work-log...this will be FUN FUN FUN!!!

 

[Pangong_ilong]

That's a huge tank you building there.

 

[rallysman]

this sounds VERY interesting! i'll be checking back frequently for progress! definately keep us updated
That is TRUE mfk style!

 

[lemcc]

Closed-cell foam is the way to go
I have been putting together some plans for a large (1000gal) tank
Using closed-cell foam but I would have mine sprayed with chopped fiberglass
Hand laying is of course much stronger

What type of foam are you using?
I have been looking into Owens corning formular 400 it’s a lot cheaper and available in thickness of up to 4"

How will you attach your foam together?

I am going to build a small 10-20gal prototype 1st

Doesn’t 1/2 foam seem a little thin?

 

[Guinness]

I don't know anything about that foam board, but I wouldn't trust that 24" stand. You may want to go with 36". Just a thought.
Guinness

 

[fishnutham]

i'm intriqued keep us posted for sure ,just the weight reduction alone makes it worth while

 

[zennzzo]

I am going to go with a product called "Last a Foam"

It's a closed cell, flame retardant, rigid, unicellular polyurethane foam sheet.
It exhibits excellent strength to weight ratio because of high strength polymer and cellular structures. It's very stable, closed cell structure makes it extremely resistant to water absorption. It has high chemical resistance and is unaffected by chemicals and solvents.
It's used as a core material, tooling and for fillets.

In it's 1/2" configuration as a "CORE" it will have both sides laminated with high-strenght Epoxy resin saturated 18 oz. roving. Then, I'll use a .75 oz. matting with the same resin.
What seems like a "thin" core is actually an engineered thickness that is only really affected by "shear" forces. By bonding the roving/matting to the entire surface of the core material, whatever the shape, your results become a "sandwich" that is waaaaaay stronger than a .500" pannel of Plexi.

the core material is surfaced to create a complete bond over it's entire surface with the resin...

For example a 4" thick Core and a 1" thickness of Roving/matting is used as the Hull surface on a 210' motor yaght. They displace much water and have dual Big boy desiels mounted in the frame rails.

A common misconception is that the core is the strenght and the resin is a sealer, not so...
The entire sandwiched core when cured, becomes one solid piece and the water-tight finnish is just a by-product of the nature of the resin...

 

[Nate_N_Nicole]

looks cool,,,, good luck

 

[zennzzo]

I don't know anything about that foam board, but I wouldn't trust that 24" stand. You may want to go with 36". Just a thought.
Guinness

That stand is going to be made of 3/4" marine grade plywood and 4x4 post stock...
With the average downforce of less than 2 psi on the bottom pannel of the actual tank, the 3000+ lbs of water will be evenly distributed over the 2000+ square inches of area on the top of the stand, transfering that load to the floor...

Add in the weight of the foamcore and resin, lights, fish, etc. and we are still looking right at 2-2.5 Psi...

Plenty of headroom for the size of base.
It'll give me room to run external H20 supply and drain pipes.
Everything will be valved so I'll be able to have pricise flow control over the H2O

 

[CentralMayhem]

sounds bad ass to me. looks like you know your stuff. what is the cost of a project like this?