I just lamaninated my first Epoxy Board. And to complicate it further, I used Biomid Fiber. For those not familiar it is an alternative to fiberglass clothe. It is a composite built of hardwood and softwood and to look at it, it appears identical to fiberglass. The weight is approximately 5.9ozs. When i laminated the bottom i used 1 layer. Once the epoxy dried it looks clear and the logo pops. No issues.
Once i lamonated the top, i used 2 layers and wet them out together. After curing the top is yellowish. Kind of like old epoxy. It sanded fine, it just looks yellowish. It appears yellowish on the bottom where the rails wrapped also.
My questions
Is it the 2 layers combined. Should i have wet out each layer seperate?
Is 5.9ozs enough to do the bottom and the top?
Is it the epoxy?
Im pretty sure this board is done unless i pigment the hotcoat and throw on a glass coat and hope for the best. Oh, im deployed in Afghanistan so supplies are limited. Ive attached pics.
What you call biomid seem to be cellulose fiber. I use this kind of fiber that is not as clear as glass and often turn slightly yellow, ivoire color, this increase with thickness. I use white tint un resin with those fiber.
I asked Gordon Shank. The guy who made the stuff and he said it is no more dangerous that a piece of paper. He still encouraged the use of a respirator due to the dust of the epoxy and/or poly. Its because of its friendlyness that i decided to use it. Fiberglass tore me to pieces.
I asked a material engineer friend what he thinks about this fibre:
Don’t bother, water absorption of all natural fibers is bad. If thou have a ding in your board, can you throw it away. The stiffness is little more than 30% of that of glass while it is likely going to be a much more expensive (?).
So I guess it’s a no go for fins, as fibre exposure to water is very likely with fins.
Biomid as lemat said is a cellulose fiber, in Europe Porcher does one also called “Greenlite” and they do in a 4oz and in surfboard cloth width , Gordon also contacted us to stock in Australia but the price would of been around the cost of Carbon hybrid cloth once imported… Still think it has its place and made into a hybrid might be ok… but cost factor is huge compared to fiberglass.
I think Toray makes the fibre, so if we can get the yarn… be interested what we can make with it using stronger fibres
I have a few yards of the stuff, myself. Not enough to do a whole board with, but I’ve wet out some samples to see how it behaves. You can kind of see the yellowish hue even in the dry cloth. I just figured I’d cutlap it, maybe add a little tint and embrace the color.
I hadn’t thought about any increased risk of water absorption, as it looks so much like glass. I may do an immersion test with some samples just to see if it gains any weight. I’ll jump all over that as soon as I wrap up the board I’ve been whittling away at for the last two years. The initial reports were that it had an E modulus somewhere between E-glass and S-glass. Since I can get S2-glass for less than biomid, it’s kind of a non-starter at the moment. Like others have said, I do believe it has merit and I hope it continues to be developed.
As all natural fiber in composits results are not consistant even if fibers properties are good on paper. Cellulose fibers are by far not the worst. I had some from composits guys i work with and never try to have more because there are better choice for me.
I’m Gordon, the developer of BioMid. We apreciate the interest and efforts. I’ve noticed in this thread, some good observation, but possibly some misconceptions. This is definately my fault as biomid sales have tripled each year, by word of mouth, so we have never done any agressive advertising campaign.
Two items of concern are are pricing and moisture regain. Glass is by far the least expensive continuous fiber that I am aware of, so naturally biomid is more expensive, but should not be remotely close to carbon or S2 glass. It is a difficult comparison because biomid is also about half the weight of glass (twice the volume for the same weight)
For the moisture regain, biomid is not better nor worse than aramid (such as DuPont’s Kevlar(r) ) There are ways to mitigate. In resin, there is an excellent bond to the hydroxly groups on the fiber. We routinely test debonding… putting a laminate sample in 98 deg. water and measuring the time to go from opaque to white.Glass can range typically from 30 min to 3 hours, depending on the quality of the coupling agent wereas biomid typically takes 4 or 5 hours.
Results of more typical cellulose fibers (which also contain hemi-cellulose, lignin, waxes and other extractables) vis-a-vis biomid are very different.
We are also working hard on another fiber to be released at JEC in 2016… a non-cellulose based fiber. Time resources are running very slim but I’d be happy to address any concerns or answer any question, preferably by phone.
