Hi everyone! I live in the French west Indies, Caribean sea, and just want to get some serious infos about epoxy laminating. Just spend the last 3 hours on the site reading some great topics about epoxy and PU but here is something different. I plan to laminate some PU blanks with epoxy resin (there are some deck destroyer around the beaches here…). BUT i heard that temperature and humidity get involved during the curing process… Here the temp is about 30° celcius, 86°F (night and day all year long) and wet. Any advices? Thanks!
glassing a board in epoxy doesnt make it much stronger unless you use more glass.
its just a resin and when you are using a thin laminate. real world differences are neglible.
the reason why you can get a stronger board with it is because you can use more glass and less resin. so unless you work to this concept your wasting your time
Hey marc, temperature sounds great for epoxy. The humidity shouldn't be a problem at all. In fact, I just emptied a hot water bath that I use when laminating with epoxy to make the resin more fluid - there were a number of epoxy 'beads' in there that had fallen in as uncured drops. They got rock solid under water! They were milky-looking, but I didn't sand them to see if that was only an amine haze. So, at 100% humidity you'll still get solid epoxy, and at 86F you'll get it pretty quickly.
just glassed some today with epoxy… 45deg. rain and 25mph onshore wind. No problem ( I hope) 86 deg French west Indies sounds like a sweet dream right about now. Go for it u wont have a problem.
glassing a board in epoxy doesnt make it much stronger unless you use more glass. (SILLY)
Well, correct me if i’m wrong, i’m not a chimist, just a garage shaper using PU/PE since 1996, but here is my “résumé”:
EPS/Epoxy= soft core/strong shell
PU/PE= strong core/soft shell
My comparison is valuable with the same weight, finished board. Epoxy is known for better properties than PE, using the same fiberglass…
So, using a PU core which i used to and laminating with epoxy could be the best combination for me.
Like nike and tiger say… Just do it!!! U will be happy.
Silly lives at the ends of the earth and enjoys great uncrowded surf but sometimes lacks in up to date materials .... maybe a trade off many of us would take. Epoxy on urethane works great ... the plethera of recent WCT wins proves this. As far as using epoxies in humidity, depends on the system. Most of the real surfboard epoxies are fine. Marine stuff, not so good.
get a peice of urethane foam glass it 4 oz epoxy and do the same with a poly
take a screwdriver and stab the fuck out of it and tell me it makes a difference.
go on
someone do it and post it on yourtube
id do it just so i can link to the vid when it comes up in threads
yes epoxy has great peel strength, hardness and adhesive and a myriad of uses in composites where polyester will not sufice
im
just saying, and believe im correct. is that in itself, in the
pathetically weak combination of foam and 1 or two layers of glass. it
doesnt make your board stronger in measurable practical purposes
i
built a couple of boards with resin research and kinetics btw. one
snapped and one went yellow and they both had epoxy fill coats. like i
said in the REAL WORLD of a rock or a heavy lip . it doesnt make much
difference. the longest surving boards i have in best condition were
bert copies the first few in balsa and marine epoxy. bet then agin i
seen plenty of 20 year old polyester boards out there.
btw
wrt latest materials, the only way anyone can beat NZ in the mericas
cup ( the holy grail of composites) is when they got kiwi crew and
ideas and budgets the size of a small countrys economy. and i can say
that without blowing my trumpet because im australian