AJ 28 BOATS
AJ Enterprises
PO Box 276
Winter Harbor, ME 04693

Phone-207-460-6295

E-mail us at <ajent@midmaine.com>

Alan Johnson -- Proprietor
Fiberglass Lamination
All fiberglass lamination done at AJ Enterprises is hand layup. That means that the resin is applied by hand not chopper gun which can cause resin rich and over catalyzed laminates. Also we use only stitched materials and no woven roving materials which can also cause laminates to be resin rich and therefore brittle and prone to cracking. We use General Purpose Polyester resin in almost all of our laminates. The most common exception is when we us the optional vinylester resin in the skin coats on our higher end boats. This is offered as an option on all of our hulls and is recommended to be used with the optional Armour-coat gelcoat to effectively eliminate the chance of osmosis blistering as a boat ages. This can be a problem especially in the warmer southern waters.
MODELS

ENGINE CHOICES

CONSTRUCTION

FINISHES
Our commercial and basic recreational boats have a solid fiberglass hull but we use sandwich construction on all of our higher end boats. The sandwich construction makes a better hull for a number of reasons. It makes a stiffer, less noisy hull which has positive flotation. The stiffness pays for itself in the performance of the hull. We have found that a cored hull outperforms a solid glass hull every time in a power for power comparison. At higher power levels the difference in performance is more pronounced and a thicker (3/4”) core is better than the industry standard for both speed and performance. That is why our Lobster Yacht comes standard with a 3/4” foam core, we feel it is the best hull we can build for these boats. We make extensive use of composite sandwich construction for the smaller parts in our boats. There is no plywood found in an AJ-28. The only things that we use dimensioned lumber for are the two pieces we use for the engine beds and the two cross-risers that are on the aft end of the engine beds and above the aft end of the keel. These pieces are made of 2X8 kiln dried and are totally encapsulated in heavy fiberglass. Our floor stringers and floors like all of our other parts are built with the sandwich construction technique that offers great weight savings and eliminates the biodegradable problems with plywood.
When we build a hull with a core we use the vacuum bagging method of holding the core in place while it is bonded to the outside skin of the hull. We apply a coat of core bond putty to the outside skin then we coat the core with resin and apply it to the hull with the wet side down. Then we then install the plastic bag over the core and draw a vacuum inside this plastic to hold the core down while the core bond putty and resin harden. The resin and putty merge and often extrude up between the squares of core. This cuts of any water migration channels in the event of damage and a leak into the core. We have used this method for all of the cored AJ-28 we have build and have had no problems of any sort with a cored hull. Also we use only foam core in hulls because of balsa being biodegradable and the nature of boats being used in and around the water there is a nearly 100% of water intrusion if the hull is ever damaged enough for the outside skin to leak.