Quote:
Originally Posted by mlangsdorf
So here's some pictures of guys making boat hulls by rolling kevlar cloth over a frame and painting it with epoxy: https://adirondack-guide-boat.com/build-kevlar-boat/
Polymer composite is apparently really popular as a structural material when weight matters but cost and bulk doesn't, so boat hulls or F1 racing cars and the like. It's also sometimes used as a structural building material.
It looks like most people don't sell resin bonded sheets, they sell bolts of kevlar fabric and epoxy by the gallon. A lot of it is business sales, so it's harder to get pricing information off a casual web search.
It doesn't look like buying epoxy and kevlar is going to set off anyone's suspicious behavior detectors, but having a boat building business would be a fine cover story. |
Ok, thanks.
Cool, so I can use the prices for these unmodified, as they are essentially buying mass produced materials and then having slave labour assemble the final products. Slave labour is not free*, but all in all, the listed prices are no further away from accurate than any WAG I'd make.
A boat-building business would indeed have been a fine cover business... when the Caballero Templarios were based in Lazaro Cardenas.
As they now hold territory in the rugged, mountainous and very, very dry deserts of Chihuahua, I expect a boat-building workshop might stand out a bit. :-)
Still, they can use someone they knew back in Lazaro Cardenas and transport the material periodically. They probably make regular runs down there anyway, smuggling meth precursors and such things, taking care to avoid the
sicarios of the
CJNG and the
Viagras**, who now fight for dominance there.
*Opportunity cost, i.e. you could be having them make something else, which you would then use or sell.
**Yes, really a thing, really called that in serious news reports.