A few questions before laminating my first board...

General Discussion
1

Hey guys - so it’s finally payday and I can finally afford to glass my first board, but I just had a few questions first… 

 

1 - can you lam the entire board with sanding resin, or do you need to use laminating resin on the first coats and then sanding resin above that? I’ve done lots of glass repairs using the solarez dual-cure resin and it seems to soak into the glass and sand just fine so I’m not too sure of the difference (most likely buying my materials from foamez.com)

 

2 - do you reccomend marking the fin placement before or after laminating??

 

3 - does anyone have a good source for pigment mixing formulas? I want to do a tint since my board is recycled from a cut-down and has that nice “pee-yellow” tint to it that old foam gets, but I’m no artist and they really only sell the pigments in primary colors and a couple others. 

2

1 ,,use lam resin to lam the board, they dont call it that for nothing

2,,Mark the board whenever you want

3,, if your new at glassing (sounds like it) dont use tint or dont expect it to look good

4,, FoamEZ guys will steer you right,,,, tell them Ken said hi and will be in there soon.

3

Thanks for the response - I am indeed new at glassing full boards. This will be my first glass job larger than a 8"x12" patch on the rail or deck. 

 

Just curious (so I know for the sake of furthering my knowledge) - is the sanding resin not exactly the same Sylmar 249A resin as the laminating coat, only with the sanding agent added?? Why can’t this be used for the lam? Does the sanding agent affect the resins ability to soak into the cloth and bond with the foam?? 

 

Also - if it is important to use the two types of resin, is there somewhere you can buy the sanding agent separately to add to your laminating resin so it an be sanded?? I’m trying to keep the costs down on this prototype so I’d prefer to not have to buy two separate jugs of resin if I can avoid it. 

 

Thanks again for all the info guys - as always everything is super-helpful

4

like I said

the guys at Foam EZ will steer you right

buy a gallon of lam resin

and buy surfacing agent, you can add that to the lam resin to make sanding resin

the lam resin stays tacky so you can coat it with sanding resin and it will stick and not fisheye.

the sand resin will cure hard and be sandable

have fun

5

You can get surfacing agent in small quantities. only use for hot coat. Do you have a  proper respirator and place to do your glassing? Proper stands so you can lap the rails? It sounds like you haven’t done much reshaping to the blank since you haven’t  gone into the exterior foam. Be sure to finish the shape properly, and don’t handle the board without gloves. Use yellow tint and mix WELL. Prepare enough tinted resin for both sides. Mark fins lightly on foam. use lap tool trick to cheat a decent looking lap line, and cut with a sharp blade. Use good tape too. Good luck!

6

Ended up getting a gallon of lam resin and some surfacing agent from fiberglass hawaii (foamez wanted $60 just for the epoxy) - this is gonna be a carport glass job since my space is limited, so we'll see how clean I can keep it with just hanging up tarps/sheets to block the wind and dust. I'm betting there's gonna be a bug or two in my hot coat but oh well, workin with what I got. I'm starting the base tonight with a light glassing schedule (1 4oz bottom 2 4oz deck with deck and rail reenforcements). I'm most likely gonna do a free-lap on the lam (no pigment I'll just paint over the glass later) and just let it cure overnight before I do the deck in the morning, then I'll hotcoat tomorrow night when I get off work.

 

I'll post photos of the finished product and let you know how it went. Hopefully within a week or two I'll have the fin kit and I can take it for a test!