26sonic

is there such a thing as a mercury racing labbed prop and a mercury labbed prop ?

UNSANE

To my knowledge, they're the same.

bbladesprops

Mercury Racing is a division of Mercury Marine. Mercury Marine and Mercury Racing produce their own lines of propellers. However, only Mercury Racing Lab Finishes propellers. Mercury Racing does both their own props and the mainline Mercury propellers.

My old boss and a few other propeller legends invented the process we all refer to as Lab Finishing" in the early 60's. The phrase Lab Finishing is a catch all term the industry uses like "Kleenex" would be to tissue. Of course different groups Lab Finish differently.

We tried to trademark the term Lab Finish for years at Mercury. Problem was it was so wide spread in the industry when we began the legal investigation in 1999. We were ultimately only able to trademark "Mercury Lab Finished".

ash72201

26 sonic first when u ask a question ask it the way it was told to u. first mercury don't have two separate prop divisions but they do have two different type of lab finishes. if u are average boater looking for performance u get lab props in a black white and red box if u are a boat racer u get a different lab finish than joe boater and that comes in a brown and white box.

bbladesprops

huh?

26sonic

bblades is this statement correct ?" only Mercury Racing Lab Finishes propellers"

bbladesprops

Black, red, and white boxes are the mainline Mercury propellers. They are not Lab Finished. Mainline Mercury does not Lab Finish any propellers. The only Lab Finishing done through Mercury Marine is done at Mercury Racing on the other side of town up on what is referred to as "the ledge". These props come in brown and black boxes similar to BBLADES boxes.

There are different levels of Lab Finishing. Some are thinner than others. There are also different people doing the Labbing which can create slight or large differences in propellers finishing. Propellers are Labbed for standard usage, racing and Kilo records. Governing racing bodies, custom prop shops (BBLADES,Merc Racing, Throttle UP, York, F&J, etc.) and manufactures determine their own Labbing recipes. Some standards do have to be adhered to for some race classes.

"Mainline" Mercury does not Lab Finish propellers!

Pat McPherson

Here is a question for you Brett.
Are the "main line" and "merc racing" Bravo 1 and Mirage+ props made from the same castings?

bbladesprops

Yes they are Bernie.

When I first started with Dennis at Merc Racing, we would get the media finished propellers from across town in the ready for sale boxes. I asked Dennis why we didn't get them in raw casting form from plant 98? He said check into the cost difference between media finish vs. grinding labor. I determined the margin was better to build Labs from raw castings than from media finished versions. Hence we started getting the castings right out of the molds in pallet containers. Definitely more work for the prop grinders removing scale but saves on the media finishing cost. It's still done that way today.

In2Deep

Sorry for dredging this very old post...but I have a question: is there a way to quickly identify a mercury racing labbed prop -- just by looking at it?