My work area is not heated but might warm it up with electric element and hot air heater, but need to wait an month or 2 before doing it. Still as low as 0 or a few below at night. I also found some boat lamination epoxy that worked down to 10 C. Might be worth checking out. Or make a second board with that stuff and compare.
My foam is pale yellow in color so Indo want to use pigments in epoxy or pain the foam with akrylicspraypaint. I somehow feel like it would be easier paintng foam than messing with pigments in epoxy. I asked Reson researh about the matter. They recomended painting the foam. Ideas on this?
You need to be careful with spray paint. Jut because it says ‘acrylic’ there can still be strong solvents toluene, acetone, xylene in the paint that can harm you and/or the EPS foam. Always read what is in the can and test on a piece of scrap of the same foam.
The last ones where I painted the foam was with acrylic paints from the tubes from the art store. The one that was the whole board I used a small paint roller.
Thanks for that jrandy. I keep that in mind. Could there be any problem to get epoxy and glass to stick to foam or is it just that the foM kan be damaged if there are solvents in it?
both, from what I’ve heard. Best to avoid rattle cans, use a sprayer or airbrush with water based acrylic.
i found a “rattle can” with waterbased acrylic pain . It seem to work nice on the foam test piece.
How many layers of glassfiberweave is it possible to use in same epoxy “session”. I have seen the deck been made with two layers, but is 3 or 4 layers possible to. With an increase in epoxy ofcourse. Will it wet all the glassfiber?
Depends on the experience of the glasser I´d say.
The experienced guys barely got problems to saturate multiple layers at once.
When I do my stringerless boards the deck glassing shedule is usually 1x5oz patch + 2x 5oz full layer.
I am a bad and unexperienced glasser. But even for me (with my slow hardening epoxy) it´s no problem to saturate the 3 layers at once.
I just give the epoxy some time to soak in.
30 Minutes porlife is more than plenty for me.
For me it´s maybe 5 minutes soaking in (I never watched the clock). I flip the rails in the meantime and saturate them like Jack Reeeves does. Then I flip the rails back, work the deck with the squeege and pull the rails around and ususally I´m finished after maybe 20 Minutes or so. (depends on how many different resintints/colours I use in the lam)
If you are insecure about how many layers you are able to saturate, you can always go the “wet in wet” route as well.
Lay one layer (or two), saturate it. Some guys even pour resin over the blank before laying the first layer. Thos way the first layer saturates from underneath.
Pull another layer of glass from your roll over the wet lam. Be carefully to put it on straight without crinkles, trying to align it after it touched the wet lam will only make a mess.
It will immediately suck resin from underneath. You just have to work some more from above.
Repeat for as much layers as needed.
I´ve tried both ways. Both work.
With all layers at once it is easier to align the dry cloth. Saturation needs a bit of care.
With one layer at a time the saturation is happening almost on it´s own, but laying the next layer of cloth on the wet lam needs a bit of care.
Thanks MiWie for that informative reply! I tried on a test subject to wet down two layers and it worked ok. Seems to ok to do 3 too. How much more epoxy do i need to calculate for every extra layer. Any useful guidelines for that?
Good thing you said you are doing a patch first and then 2 full layers. I was thinking about doing this myself too, but how does it look? Does the edge smooth out in the end! May the it be visible in the end? I saw some dude on youtube shaped the edge of the patch as an “V”-shape sommake an cool look, but he was using yellow pigment in epoxy and that might make it a bit darker where there is more layers off glassfiber.
Hope it gets warmer soon so I can glass the fatfish and go surfing
Cheers
Bloke, for a basic 50:50 hand lamination, the weight of cloth and weight of mixed resin is the same plus whatever for spills, brush, etc…
On a first layer lamination, I mix a little more than the weight of the cloth.
For the next layer(s), I mix a little less than the weight of the cloth.
If you are the type to take notes, you can write your results down, including any extra left over or extra mixed, and learn from previous runs.
Sometimes I make the main epoxy batch a little ‘short’ then mix a little more ‘fresh’ to do the rails.
There is a chart from Greenlight that approximates resin for surfboards. Weighting the cloth works for non-surfboard shaped projects too.
I do it basically the same way as jrandy does it.
Weight of cloth = weight of resin.
No problem with epoxy to mix a small batch in case you run short on the rails.
Thanks guys! That rule seems easy to remember.
