ESI Composites 1 — Fundamentals, Materials & Safety

Before you start

How this course works

This is the first composites course at ESI and everything after it assumes you have passed it. It is deliberately front-loaded with materials and safety, because almost every expensive mistake in a composites bay traces back to one of two things: somebody did not understand the material they were holding, or somebody did not respect it. Fourteen chapters, a check at the end of each, then a final exam at 80% to unlock your certificate. Your completion is recorded automatically.

Chapter 1

🧩What a Composite Actually Is

A tech says the part failed because "the glass was bad." It was not. The ratio was.

A composite is two materials that are useless apart and excellent together. The reinforcement (glass, carbon, aramid) carries load — it is strong in tension along the fiber. The matrix (polyester, vinyl ester, epoxy) does three jobs: it holds the fibers in position, it transfers load between them, and it protects them from water and abrasion. Neither one is a structure on its own. A bundle of dry glass has no shape. A block of cured resin is brittle and weak.

Because the fiber carries the load and the resin mostly just holds it, the percentage of fiber in the finished laminate is the single biggest driver of strength and stiffness per pound. More resin than you need is not "extra safety" — it is dead weight, more shrinkage, more exotherm, and a part that is measurably weaker for its mass.

Fiber-content figures above are quoted from Easy Composites and the CKN Knowledge in Practice Centre. Confirm target ratios against the resin and reinforcement data sheets for the specific job before use.

Chapter 2

🧶Reinforcements — Knowing What You Are Holding

Somebody grabs chopped strand mat for an epoxy repair. The binder never dissolves. The repair delaminates.

Walk into the glass rack and you will see five or six different-looking materials. They are not interchangeable. Picking the wrong one is not a style choice — it changes strength, weight, finish and sometimes whether the part bonds at all.

This is the classic new-tech error, so learn it once and never repeat it. Standard chopped strand mat is bound with a styrene-soluble binder. Polyester and vinyl ester both contain styrene, so the binder dissolves and the mat conforms and wets out properly. Epoxy contains no styrene. Put standard CSM in an epoxy layup and the binder stays intact, the mat resists wetting, and you get a stiff, poorly bonded, resin-rich layer. If you must use mat with epoxy, you need a mat specifically sold as epoxy-compatible.

Fibers only work along their length. A 0/90 fabric does nothing useful at 45 degrees, which is exactly why biaxial fabrics exist. When you cut on the bias — Easy Composites cut prepreg at 45 degrees to the weave for a curvy edge — the fabric drapes far better around compound curves.

Plan your overlaps. Easy Composites deliberately place fabric overlaps "in corners, runners and shoulders as the added thickness will be beneficial in these highly loaded areas." Never stack every overlap in the same place on a flat panel — you build a hard spot and a stress riser.

Chapter 3

🧬Resin Systems — and Why ESI Reaches for Vinyl Ester

"Just use the epoxy, it is the strong one." Then the polyester gelcoat over it never cures.

Three families do almost all the work in this yard. They are not grades of the same thing — they cure by different chemistry and they are not freely interchangeable.

Vinyl ester sits deliberately between the other two, and for the work this yard does it wins on four counts:

• Cure speed and schedule control. It kicks and cures at shop temperature in a timeframe that fits a working day. You are not tying up a bay or a boat overnight waiting on a cure the way you often are with a slow epoxy.
• It is a controllable product. Gel time is adjusted by catalyst percentage within the manufacturer range. Hot day, small job, tight corner — you can dial it. Epoxy gives you far less live control; you are largely stuck with the hardener grade you picked.
• High adhesion, especially secondary adhesion. Almost all repair work at ESI is a secondary bond — new laminate onto old, fully cured laminate. Vinyl ester bonds to prepared existing laminate far better than polyester does, which is exactly the joint that matters in a repair.
• Hydrolytic stability. It resists water uptake and osmotic blistering markedly better than ortho polyester. On a boat, that is the difference between a repair that lasts and one that comes back.

Two more practical points: it is compatible with polyester gelcoat, so the repair can be finished the normal way, and it is substantially cheaper than epoxy while getting most of the way to epoxy performance for marine laminating.

Resin properties above are the general engineering consensus and are given for training. Confirm cure schedules, ratios and compatibility against the current technical data sheet for the exact product before use.

Chapter 4

⏱Catalyst, Cure and Control

A gallon of catalyzed resin gets left in the pot on a hot afternoon. It smokes, cracks the bucket, and fills the bay with styrene.

Polyester and vinyl ester cure by free radical polymerisation. The promoter (usually a cobalt compound, normally already in the resin as supplied) reacts with the catalyst (MEKP) to generate free radicals, which start the styrene cross-linking chain reaction. Once it starts, it is self-sustaining and it generates heat. That heat speeds up the reaction, which generates more heat. That feedback loop is called exotherm, and understanding it is most of what separates a controlled laminate from a destroyed part.

Typical MEKP addition for polyester and vinyl ester falls in the low single digits by weight and the usable window is narrow at both ends. Do not guess and do not eyeball it. Use the manufacturer figure for that product at that temperature, and measure it.

A large mass of catalyzed resin in a container is the classic way to start a fire in a composites shop. It will smoke, go brown or black, crack, melt the container, and release a heavy slug of styrene. Prevent it by:

1. Mixing only what you will use. Batch the work — Easy Composites note that for bigger or slower projects resin "can be mixed in smaller batches to ensure the resin in the pot does not run out of pot life."
2. Never leaving catalyzed resin standing in a deep container. If you have leftovers, get them out of the bucket and spread thin at the cure-out station (Chapter 14).
3. Watching the temperature. On a hot day, drop catalyst to the low end of range, work smaller batches, and stage material in the shade.
4. Never trying to accelerate a slow cure with extra catalyst on the next batch without checking why the first one was slow. Cold shop, old catalyst and bad measuring all look the same from the outside.

Chapter 5

🎨Gelcoat, Primer and Paint — Three Different Jobs

The customer asks "should I gelcoat it or paint it?" The right answer depends on how they use the boat.

These three get lumped together as "the shiny bit." They are not the same and they fail differently.

Gelcoat is a pigmented, filled polyester or vinyl ester resin. On a molded part it is sprayed into the mold first, and the laminate is built onto the back of it — so it is chemically part of the part, not a film sitting on it. It goes on far thicker than paint, and that thickness is exactly why it can be sanded, compounded and polished repeatedly over a boat lifetime and why it can be spot repaired without touching the rest of the hull.

Two things about gelcoat catch people out. First, it is air-inhibited: exposed to air it stays tacky and will not fully cure. In the mold that does not matter because the laminate covers it. For a repair patch it matters completely — you must either use a gelcoat containing a surfacing agent (wax) or seal the patch from air with PVA film or Mylar. Second, old gelcoat has been weathering for years, so new gelcoat mixed to the original color will not match it. You tint to the boat, not to the chip.

Full gelcoat patching, feathering technique and nonskid pattern repair are taught in ESI Composites 2 — Patching, Gelcoat & Repair.

Primer is not filler and it is not paint. It does four jobs, and you should be able to say which one you are buying on a given job:

• Adhesion — it grips the substrate and gives the topcoat something to grip.
• Barrier — it isolates the substrate from moisture and from the topcoat chemistry.
• Holdout — it stops the topcoat sinking into a porous surface and going dull in patches.
• Build and blocking — high-build primers give you a film you can block flat so the topcoat lays over a truly fair surface.

Awlgrip 545 Epoxy Primer is the general-purpose two-part epoxy primer ESI uses under Awlgrip and Awlcraft topcoats. It is the workhorse: it goes over properly prepared composite, metal and fairing compound, it acts as an adhesion and barrier coat, and it sands. It is what you are usually looking at when somebody in this yard says "get it in 545."

The rest of the family, and what each is actually for:

This is the decision that gets made wrong most often, and the deciding factor is almost never gloss. It is repairability.

Product positioning above reflects manufacturer guidance for the Awlgrip / Awlcraft lines. Verify all mix ratios, reducers, film thickness, recoat windows and PPE requirements against the current technical data sheet and SDS for the specific product before use.

Chapter 6

🧱Cores and Sandwich Construction

A deck feels soft underfoot. The skins are fine. The core is wet and the bond is gone.

Take two thin skins, separate them with a light core, and you get a panel that is dramatically stiffer than the same weight of solid laminate. The reason is geometry, not material: stiffness rises very quickly with the distance between the skins. The core does not carry much bending load itself — its job is to hold the skins apart and carry the shear between them.

That single sentence tells you where sandwich panels fail. If the core-to-skin bond fails, or the core crushes, the two skins stop acting as one panel and the whole structure collapses to two floppy sheets.

Wherever a core stops, the skin has to come down to the solid laminate. If the core edge is left square, the fabric tents across the step and you build a void right at a stress concentration. Easy Composites are explicit: core edges are sanded to a chamfer so that "when the Kevlar is laid over, there are no sharp edges that could bridge and cause voiding or other issues during the infusion."

Anywhere a fitting, fastener or load lands on a cored panel, the core must be replaced with solid laminate or a suitable hard insert. Bolting a winch through foam crushes the core, and the panel loses exactly the separation that gave it its stiffness. Where a fastener has to pass through a cored panel, the core is removed around the hole and the space filled with thickened resin so the fastener bears on solid material and water can never reach the core.

Chapter 7

⚙️Choosing the Right Process — Correct Usage of Each Technology

A one-off bracket gets infused. Four hours of bagging for a part that needed twenty minutes and a roller.

Every process in this yard makes a laminate. They differ in how the resin gets metered, and that one difference drives everything else — fiber content, repeatability, tooling cost, cycle time and how much of the outcome depends on the individual holding the roller.

Every step up that table buys you consistency and fiber content, and charges you in setup time, consumables, tooling requirements and the cost of a failure. A failed hand layup costs you an hour. A failed infusion on a large part can cost you the part, the consumables, a day, and the resin. Easy Composites are blunt about the entry cost at the top of the ladder: it is "rare to find an autoclave for less than around 50k pounds," before you run it or service it.

1. What does the part have to do? Structural, cosmetic, or both. A specified requirement overrides everything below.
2. How many are you making? One is a hand layup or a moldless build. Twenty is a mold and a repeatable process.
3. How big and how complex? Flow distance kills infusions — Easy Composites had to shorten a flow path from a run that "could take 4 hours or more, which is longer than the resin pot life."
4. What tooling do you have, and will it survive? Prepreg cure temperature rules out polyurethane tooling board entirely — Easy Composites list it as not compatible because "at elevated temperature polyurethane inhibits the cure of epoxies."
5. What is the cost of getting it wrong? That sets how much process control you buy.

Chapter 8

🏭The Composites Bay — Environment, Setup and 5S

It is 48 degrees and damp in the bay. The laminate goes on beautifully and never fully cures.

In a machine shop the environment is a comfort issue. In a composites bay it is a process variable. Temperature drives gel time and cure. Moisture on a surface kills a bond. Dust in the air lands in a wet laminate. Silicone anywhere near the bay contaminates everything it touches.

• Cold slows or stops cure. Below the manufacturer minimum, a laminate can stay soft indefinitely — and adding catalyst does not fix a temperature problem.
• Heat shortens everything. Pot life, gel time, working time. Batch smaller and drop to the low end of the catalyst range.
• Surfaces must be dry. A part brought in cold from outside will condense moisture as the bay warms it. Let it come up to temperature before you prep and bond.
• Stage material in the bay, not the yard. Resin, fabric and core should be at working temperature before you start, not pulled cold off a rack mid-job.

Silicone, mold release, wax and oil are the enemies of adhesion. Traces you cannot see will cause fisheyes in a coating and a failed bond in a laminate. The rules are simple and absolute:

Chapter 9

📜WISHA — the Framework You Work Under

A tech quotes a limit he read online. It is not the limit that applies in this state.

Occupational safety in this yard is governed by the Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act — WISHA, administered and enforced by the Department of Labor & Industries through its Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH). WISHA has jurisdiction here. L&I inspects this yard, L&I issues the citations, and L&I is who you deal with.

The rules are written in the Washington Administrative Code — the WAC numbers below. If you find a figure quoted somewhere that does not match the WAC, the WAC is what governs you.

But you are not expected to read the WAC before a job, and you should not be trying to. The WAC is the legal backing. ESI’s own documents are what you actually work to, and they are built to carry the WAC requirements down into something usable on the floor. There are two of them.

Citations above were read from current Washington Administrative Code text. Rules are amended. Confirm the current text at app.leg.wa.gov and lni.wa.gov before relying on any citation operationally.

Every hazardous chemical in this yard has to be labelled, has to have a Safety Data Sheet available to you, and you have to be trained on it. That is Chapter 296-901 WAC. An SDS has sixteen sections; four of them are the ones you actually open:

Washington requires every employer to have a written Accident Prevention Program (WAC 296-800-14005) tailored to the actual hazards of the workplace, plus safety committees or safety meetings (WAC 296-800-130). ESI has one, it is specific to this yard, and you are expected to know where it is and to have read the parts that cover your work. It is not a binder that lives on a shelf. Your part in it is concrete: attend the meetings, report hazards, and use the reporting route rather than working around a problem.

Chapter 10

💨Styrene, Solvents and Respiratory Protection

"I cannot smell it any more, so it must have cleared." That is exactly backwards.

Open molding with polyester and vinyl ester releases styrene. It is the smell people associate with a boatyard, and it is the exposure that this yard manages most carefully.

Those are the two numbers that govern styrene in this yard. 50 ppm averaged over an 8-hour day, and 100 ppm short-term. If you see a higher figure quoted anywhere, it does not apply here.

Published styrene odour thresholds sit far below the exposure limit — various sources put detection around a few tenths of a ppm or lower. So you smell styrene long before it is dangerous, which sounds reassuring. The problem is the opposite one: styrene has poor warning properties. You go nose-blind to it within a fairly short exposure. The moment you stop noticing the smell is not the moment the air cleared — it is the moment you lost your only informal indicator.

WAC 296-841-20010 requires exposures to be controlled, and the order matters. A respirator is the last line, not the first.

1. Eliminate or substitute — a lower-styrene or non-styrene system, or a closed process. Infusion moves the resin inside a sealed bag and is a genuine emissions control, not just a quality one.
2. Engineering controls — local exhaust ventilation at the point of generation, bay air changes, spray booths. This is where the real reduction comes from.
3. Administrative controls — job rotation, scheduling, batch size, keeping people out of the bay who do not need to be there, keeping resin containers closed.
4. PPE — respirators, last.

A written respirator program is required under WAC 296-842-10505 unless employees use only filtering facepieces and only voluntarily. The program covers selection, medical evaluation, fit testing, training, cleaning, storage, maintenance, cartridge change schedules and air supply.

Washington has a detail worth knowing: if you voluntarily wear an elastomeric half-mask with organic vapour cartridges, that still triggers a written program, a medical evaluation, cleaning and storage procedures and training — even though voluntary use is exempted from fit testing and from a cartridge change schedule. Grabbing a half-mask off a shelf because it feels sensible is not a neutral act. Go through the program.

The employer pays. WAC 296-842-12005(1) puts the cost of respirators, medical evaluation, fit testing, training and maintenance on ESI, including your time. You are never expected to buy your own.

The converter side of a two-part polyurethane topcoat is isocyanate chemistry. There is a genuine regulatory gap here that you should understand rather than be reassured by: Washington lists limits for some isocyanate monomers (MDI at a 0.02 ppm ceiling; TDI at 0.005 ppm TWA and 0.02 ppm STEL) but HDI is not listed at all, and the isocyanate prepolymers that actually make up the sprayed product have no exposure limit at all — there is no figure for them in the Washington PEL table, and none published by the recognised limit-setting bodies either.

Chapter 11

⌛Cumulative Exposure — Why the Limit Is Not a Safety Line

There is no incident report for this one. Nobody was ever out of compliance. That is what makes it dangerous.

Chapter 10 gave you the numbers: 50 ppm averaged over eight hours, 100 ppm short term. Those numbers keep ESI compliant and they keep you out of the acute effects. They are not a promise that nothing will happen to you.

This chapter exists because the most serious styrene injuries in this trade do not happen on the day somebody gets a big exposure. They happen slowly, to people who were never out of compliance, over a working life.

That single distinction is the most important thing in this course. A tech who understands it works differently from one who does not — because "am I under the limit?" and "how do I breathe less of this?" produce completely different habits.

What matters over a career is not any single day. It is total dose — concentration multiplied by time, added up over every shift you ever work. Two consequences follow, and both cut against normal instinct:

• Small jobs count. Ten minutes over an open bucket, four times a day, five days a week, for twenty years is a very large number. The instinct that a quick job is not worth gloving up and gearing up for is exactly the instinct that accumulates the dose.
• You do not have to be the laminator. The person walking through the bay, the tech working the next boat over, whoever shares air with the laminating area — they are breathing it too, and they are usually wearing nothing, because they do not think of themselves as exposed.

The effects above reflect the established occupational health literature on styrene and solvent exposure and are given for training. They are not a diagnosis and not medical advice. Anyone with symptoms should be assessed by a medical provider, and occupational exposure concerns should go through the ESI safety program.

Chapter 12 describes epoxy sensitization as a career-ender. Styrene has its own version of that outcome, and this course would be failing you if it did not say so.

People who have worked around styrene for years can reach a point where they can no longer tolerate being near it at all. Levels they worked in without difficulty for a decade start producing headache, nausea, disorientation, breathing difficulty or worse, within minutes. The mechanism is not the clean immunological sensitization that isocyanates and epoxy amines produce, and it is not as well characterised — but the practical outcome is the same, and it is permanent: you cannot work in a laminating bay any more.

Two people can work the same bay for the same years and have completely different outcomes. Age, genetics, other exposures, health history and simple individual variation all play in. That has two practical implications:

• You cannot judge your own risk from how the person next to you is doing. "He has done it for thirty years and he is fine" tells you nothing about you.
• Early symptoms in one person are not weakness. They are information — often the first signal that controls in that area are not good enough for everybody working in it.

Once you accept that dose accumulates, the target stops being the limit and becomes as little as you can reasonably manage. Every ppm-hour you do not breathe is one you never have to account for later. In practice, in order of effect:

1. Closed processes. Infusion keeps the resin inside a sealed bag instead of evaporating off an open laminate. Composites 4 is an exposure control as much as a quality process.
2. Extraction at the source, running, positioned where the vapour actually is — not a fan pointed at the general area.
3. Containers closed. Always. Every time.
4. Batch small and pour low. Less surface area, less time open, less splashing.
5. Keep people out of the bay who do not need to be in it, and tell people when open work is starting.
6. Respirator worn properly, fitted, with cartridges changed on schedule — and understood as the last line, not the first.
7. Wear it for the small job too. That is where the career dose is actually built.

The outcome for someone developing intolerance depends heavily on how early the exposure stops. That makes early reporting the single most useful thing you can personally do.

Exposure and medical records are kept under Chapter 296-802 WAC, and they exist precisely so that a pattern over years can be seen. A symptom mentioned in passing and never written down cannot protect anybody.

Chapter 12

🧤Skin, Eyes and MEKP — the Injuries That Actually Happen

A catalyst bottle gets squeezed. A drop goes in an eye. That is a blindness event, and the clock starts now.

The exposures that hurt people in composites shops are not usually dramatic. They are a drop of catalyst, a habit of wiping resin off with solvent, and years of thin gloves.

Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, CAS 1338-23-4, is an organic peroxide. Washington sets a ceiling of 0.2 ppm — a never-exceed instantaneous value, not an average. A ceiling means there is no permitted excursion above it, ever, not even briefly.

Neat MEKP is shock sensitive. What you handle is deliberately diluted — commercial product is cut with around 40 percent of a phlegmatizer such as dimethyl phthalate specifically to reduce shock sensitivity. That dilution makes it shippable and workable. It does not make it mild.

The rest of the MEKP rules follow from what it is:

• Full face or sealed goggles whenever catalyst is dispensed or a pot is mixed. Safety glasses with open sides are not adequate for dispensing catalyst.
• Never mix with accelerator, promoter, or any oxidiser. Chapter 4 covered why.
• Store separately from resin, accelerators, solvents and combustibles, cool, closed, upright, and in its original labelled container. Never decanted into an unlabelled bottle.
• Never return unused catalyst to the stock container. Contamination in a peroxide container is how you get a runaway in storage.
• Spills get absorbed with an inert absorbent per the SDS — never with sawdust, rags, or anything organic and combustible.

A glove is not a glove. Chemicals permeate materials at very different rates, and the thin blue disposables in the dispenser are not rated for everything in this bay. Two specifics worth memorising:

• Styrene permeates most common glove materials quickly. A disposable that is fine for two minutes of handling is not fine for an hour with your hands in resin.
• For isocyanates, manufacturer guidance is explicit: use nitrile or another chemically compatible glove at least 8 mil thick, and latex gloves are not protective.

Epoxy hardeners are amines. Repeated skin contact can produce sensitization: your immune system learns to react to it. Once that happens it is generally permanent, and afterwards even trace exposure can produce severe dermatitis. People leave this trade over it. It is entirely preventable and it is prevented by not getting it on your skin in the first place.

Amine blush is the waxy film that can form on curing epoxy in humid conditions. It is a bonding and coating problem, not just a cosmetic one — it must be washed off with water and the surface abraded before anything goes over it.

• Eye and face protection is required under WAC 296-800-16050, to ANSI Z87.1.
• ESI pays for your PPE — WAC 296-800-16020 puts the cost on the employer.
• Your PPE training has to be documented under WAC 296-800-16035. That is a Washington-specific duty, and it is why you sign for training.
• Know where the nearest eyewash and shower are before you open a catalyst bottle. Walk it once.

Chapter 13

🌪Dust — Grinding, Sanding and the Silica Question

Someone dry-grinds a fairing compound in an open bay all afternoon. Everyone downwind breathed it.

Cured composite is chemically inert. Turning it into powder is not. Grinding, sanding and cutting are the operations that generate the most airborne exposure in a boatyard, and they are usually done with the least protection because "it is just dust."

You will hear that fiberglass dust is a silica hazard. That is not accurate, and the accurate version matters more:

• E-glass fiber is amorphous silica — the non-crystalline form. The respirable crystalline silica rule is written specifically for the crystalline form. Glass fiber itself is not what that rule is aimed at.
• But the fillers might be. Fairing compounds, putties, tooling pastes and some resins carry mineral fillers — and some of those contain crystalline silica. That is what determines whether Chapter 296-840 WAC applies to a given sanding job.
• So the answer is not "fiberglass is fine." The answer is: read Section 3 and Section 8 of the SDS for the product you are about to sand.

Note the action level for silica is half the PEL. Crossing the action level triggers obligations — it is not a safe zone.

Same hierarchy as Chapter 10, and the same conclusion: the respirator is last. In practice the single biggest improvement available in most yards is shrouded, vacuum-extracted sanders and grinders with HEPA filtration. Dust captured at the disc never reaches anybody. Dust released into the bay reaches everybody, including people who are not wearing anything.

Glass fibers cause mechanical skin irritation — the itch is physical, not allergic. Wash with cool water; hot water opens pores and drives fibers in. Long sleeves and a barrier at the neck and wrists prevent most of it.

Grinders are loud enough to matter. Hearing loss prevention is Chapter 296-817 WAC and hearing damage is cumulative and permanent. Hearing protection goes on before the tool starts.

Chapter 14

♻Waste, Disposal, Uncured Product and the Cure-Out Station

Solvent rags go in a plastic bin at knock-off. At 2am the bin is on fire and so is the bay.

Nearly every disposal rule in a composites shop comes from one idea: the hazard lives in the uncured state. Liquid resin is a styrene source, a skin sensitizer and often ignitable. Catalyst is an organic peroxide. Solvent is flammable. Once resin is fully cured it is an inert solid. So the disposal strategy is not "throw it away carefully" — it is get it into the safe state first, then dispose of it.

Leftover catalyzed resin never goes in a bin as a liquid and never gets left standing in a deep bucket. A deep pot of catalyzed resin is a fire waiting to happen — Chapter 4 covered runaway exotherm. ESI runs a designated cure-out station:

• Non-combustible tray or container, in a designated, ventilated area, clear of ignition sources and away from flammable storage.
• Spread thin. A thin layer sheds heat. A deep pot concentrates it. This is the whole point of the station.
• Never mix waste streams in the tray — no solvent, no rags, no catalyst poured in.
• Leave it until it is genuinely hard and cool, then handle it as cured solid waste per the yard waste program. Easy Composites give the practical cure check: bend it — it should crack and snap, not flex.
• A smoking or discoloured pot is a fire event. Get it to the designated outdoor area, tell your lead, and do not carry it through the shop.

Solvent-soaked and resin-soaked rags in a pile generate heat as they oxidise and cure. In a closed plastic bin overnight they can reach ignition. This is one of the most common causes of shop fires and it is completely preventable.

Waste from this yard is governed by Washington Ecology under the Dangerous Waste regulations, Chapter 173-303 WAC. They are broader than most people expect. The key points for you:

• The generator has the duty to designate the waste — WAC 173-303-070. ESI has to determine what each waste stream is. Nobody gets to guess.
• Ignitability (D001) covers liquids with a flash point below 60 °C (140 °F) — WAC 173-303-090(5). Acetone and most shop solvents land here.
• Organic peroxides fall under ignitability in Washington. Waste MEKP designates as D001 in this state.
• Washington has state-only designation criteria on top of the standard ones, so a waste can designate as dangerous here on Washington criteria alone.
• Ecology has published guidance covering uncured resin waste (Ecology Publication 25-04-079). The yard waste program is built on it — ask, do not assume.

Waste citations above were read from current Washington Administrative Code and Ecology publication listings. Waste designation is job and product specific — work to the ESI waste program and the SDS, and confirm current rule text before relying on any citation.

Chapter 15

♻Kaizen in the Composites Bay

A tech works out a better way to stage consumables. He never tells anyone. Two years later he leaves and it goes with him.

This chapter is not new material. It is Production Tech 1 applied to this trade, and it is here because composites work is unusually rich in improvement opportunities: the processes are long, they have many steps, most steps are manual, and small differences in method produce large differences in outcome.

Nothing changes about when you flag. You mark ** in the boatyard app and tag your manager when you find:

And the rule from Production Tech 1 stands: there are no bad flags. A flag that turns out small costs nothing. Silence can cost the yard years.

1. Plan — state what you think is wrong and what you will change. One variable.
2. Do — try it small. One cart, one bay, one part. Never roll an untested change onto a customer boat.
3. Check — against the number you were already logging. This is why the baseline matters.
4. Act — if it works it becomes the standard, the standard gets written down, and everyone gets trained. If it does not, record that too, so nobody tries it again next year.

And the other half of the pillar: flags are aimed at processes, not people. "The staging in bay 3 costs us fifteen minutes a job" is a flag. Naming the person who staged it is not.

Final certification

🎓Final exam

Thirty-eight questions drawn from all fifteen chapters. You need 80% to pass. Put your name on the certificate and your completion is recorded to ESI training automatically.

ESSENTIAL SHIPYARD UNIVERSITY

Certificate of Completion

This certifies that

has successfully completed ESI Composites 1 — Fiberglass fundamentals, materials, coatings & safety — and passed the final examination to the ESI standard.

Jason Knott

President

Essential Shipyard Industries

★CERTIFIED

Date Issued

Essential Shipyard University