Just wanted to ask the experienced builders here, if there was any reason why you can’t apply a cheater coat, laminate and then hot coat, on one deck before allowing to fully cure and then flipping to repeat on the other side? Would this cause problems on a cut lap? Sure my inexperience is glaringly obvious in asking, but it just seems to me this would be reasonably easy to manage compared to flipping and coating the board both sides at each stage.
Advise / thoughts much appreciated.
Thanks
What kind of resin you working with? You say hotcoat so I assume it’s poly.
It goes laminate -> cheater -> hotcoat.
If you did all the steps on one side, you would have a lot more work to do. taping and preping rails so that your other side could be laminated over area that has a hot coat on it. Then you’d have to hotcoat your rails a second time and they would probably be real thick and wonky.
Glass a board and the reasons will stick out.
Laminate the bottom - prep the lap - laminate the deck - cheater coat the deck and rails - hotcoat deck and rails - prep bottom and rail - cheaper coat bottom - tape off rail and tail dam - hotcoat bottom - sand - surf.
To my knowledge, a cheater coat is done after sanding the hot coat to correct defects from the lamination or sanding mishaps.
Hot coat is another term for a sanding coat. Its purpose is to allow you to sand the lamination to a smooth, even surface before the final finish is applied, be that a gloss coat or a spray finish.
Applying sanding resin to a lamination before doing the opposite side is a waste of resin and you will have to sand where the glass overlaps to get some kind of bond. Sanding resin has wax in it and resin does not stick to wax.
Cheater coat - a skim coat of lam resin to fill in the weave and a baste of the rail/nose/tail/areas prone to burn through before hotcoat.
At least that’s always how I’ve referred to it… Heard it called a cheater coat / skim coat / baste coat. Some guys do it with hotcoat resin too.
Maybe I live in fantasy land and got it all backwards. Who knows??
Maybe I got it backwards?
Thanks for your input both of you, much appreciated.
I think most of my confusion comes from reading around the subject from multiple sources, where coat names are referred to differently.
I’ll tie in what you’ve both told me to what I’ve noted from elsewhere.
Thick and wonky rails puts my initial question to bed. Will follow your advise instead.
Hadn’t read anything to date on sanding resin and its wax content. Thanks for that comment to.
All the best