2 days, still tacky

General Discussion
1

i know.

i know.

test batches

always do test batches

i knew that

I just didnt do it.

old board, small town, home repairs in the garage

using fiberlay p-19 surfboard resin, fiberlay MEKP and fiberlay surface seal additive. Old white board, lotsa brown spots and old dings, a few reglassed spots, re-did a snapped off nose. I thought, hey, a dark blue semi-transparent resin job that covers the bottom and wraps the rails would be cool.

went to swaylocks, read a lot about resin tints. read about the watered-down weakness of boatyard pigments. looked at pics, read, vowed to make test-batches.

by the time the chandlery got surface sealant back in stock, i had all the repairs done and the board had been sitting, waiting, rough sanded and ready for a glossy new coat. Temp, 67deg, warm for these parts, with the garage door down, plenty warm during the day in the garage.

Mixed one cup resin .25 oz surface seal and 1/2tsp white pigment and 1/2 to 3/4 oz blue. stir. stir. stir. stir. change hands, and stir. add catalyst…stir.

painted it on, expecting to see the stringer and the old logo, a few darker spots from the old bruising… no. this stuff was opaque. O-paque. Like blue latex house paint. Oh well, at least it wasn’t water-color thin barely noticeable transparent. long strokes now, smooth it out, good coverage. man, thats blue. it looks like a goddam pop-out.

Cool, don’t mess with it any more. let the brush strokes fade, go in the house. set the oven timer for twenty minutes.

Buzzzzzzzzz!!!

Out to the garage, no mask, fumes industrial strength with the door down, outside it’s blowing 20 knots, but warm. Pick up the pot… still syrup. Brush, still flexible. Hmm. So it’s gonna kick slow.

back in the house, watch Band of Brothers. Look on the net. It should be firming up… no, syrup in the pot, starting to coagulate a little here and there. Brush getting stiff… good. Leave it till tomorrow.

6 am… wonder how she looks? Lightly touch a fingertip back by the fin, someplace unnoticeable, just in case. Wet. Finger comes up blue. Smudged spot. Touch a few more… more blemishes.

Back home at 6pm, warm sunny day, garage has been going down to 48 at night, up into the 70s during the day, full color temperature spectrum. Tacky in some spots, dry but soft in others, out and out wet in others. Grrrr, I need my garage this Friday, i got a lot of work to do and more pressing projects… Hmm, flip it over anyway, mix a hotter batch, push the MEKP, a little more surface seal, a little less pigment, start brushing. I’ll fix the blems on the bottom once the top is dry. There we go, that’s it, thats the color and the look i was going for. Spreading on smooth, looks nice. brush strokes fade out, beautiful. Oven timer, 25 minutes. Dont think about it… dont go out there. Waited 30 minutes. Went out in the garage, the pot had kicked. Hooray! Maybe it’s gelled enough to peel the tape? Hmm, the brush is still pliable, fuck, it’s still dripping, soft. I touch the tape where a little resin has lapped up over it. Wet. I touch a couple spots on the bottom, my fingers come back with blue on them. Not as uniformly wet on the bottom, try not to think about how I made a couple big blemishes on the bottom by being hasty… I just couldn’t wait to see what that top would look like with those blue rails. gorgeous. Wet useless. 2 hours later, I could peel the tape. it looked killer, it looked glossy, it looked like a different board. It looked wet, because it was. 12 hours later, I go out, I touch the rail…

My finger comes up blue. I made another blemish. i still can’t move the board or use the garage.

I am a total idiot.

what can i do? I have thought about mixing up a really hot clear coat and recoating both sides to try and make it kick? What should I do to fix this?

Test batches.

if you come across this thread because you want to change the color of your board or re-gloss coat your board, do test batches.

2

it seems to have kicked. it’s getting pretty hard now. all it took was a public confession. delete this thread.

3

blue and red pigments tints poison resin to much can efect the cure and strenght overall +all tints and pigments weaken resin blue and red seem 2b the worse

4

Howzit stiffler, Nat has some good advice about the pigment colors. Maybe you added to much pigment which will cause these kind of problems. Did you add the pigment straight into the resin or did you mix the pigment with a small batch of resin then run that through a strainer into the bigger batch of resin. That is how pigments and tints are supposed to be added to resin for laminations. Aloha,Kokua

5

Boat tint + white = opauqe pastel.

6

I have given up on dark blue for resin pins.It is not what it used to be.Pigments in general seem to be different.I loved the old RAM and PDI colors.(but then again I miss Dion resin,purple waxmate,Volkswagen Campers with 8 track tapes,and 32 inch inch waistband baggies.) RB

7

it was still tacky as hell this afternoon, fingers and hands come up blue, entire bottom looked like somebody painted it with blue latex house paint and then touched it a bunch of times. Acetone will remove it, i know becuase i soaked a rag and cleaned off a spot about the size of a dinner plate. Im gonna clean the bottom and re-do it so it fades from solid on the rails into transluscent on the bottom.

what a mess. im tempted to post some pics of this train wreck.

8

Stiffy—If I were you I would just start over. Acetone the whole thing clean and start fresh. Try something differant this time though; just paint it. Use omni. Spray it and forget about it.

9

I’ve never used poly for a board, however, used to use a bunch of gelcoat at a boatyard for @3 years. Had to use PVA(polyvinyl alcohol) to seal the stuff since it had to cure in an airless enviroment.

10

I miss Ram and Dion too.Kerox makes a great pigment .With reds and blues cobalt,strain everything

11

I think you way under catalyzed the mix. Next time use a lot more catalyst. Doing color panels requires a lot more catalyst, color panels is like a huge pinline. Or better yet, think of it as a gloss coat with tint in it. So you got to at least kick it like a gloss, but then you have to adjust up for the tint.

I’m in the process of restoring a Brewer tow board thats complete beat to hell. I did some hotcot panels to hide the carnage in red. I think I used about 8-10 oz of resin, 1 heaping huge dripping table spoon of opaque red, and 10 cc of catalyst. It was 85 degrees out. It kicked in about 7 mins.

I don’t know how much cat you actually used, but when you add color you need to kick it up some. And if your doing it in the lam coat, you need to kick it up properly, because if not the resin will run out of the cloth, soak into the foam, and leave you with a blotchy, splochy, drained, heavy lamination. Also with so many crappy blanks out there, you can really get a spongey blank that will suck the resin in a matter of minutes, if not seconds…good luck.