Epoxy Fisheyes

General Discussion
1

Hello all,

New poster, longtime lurker. Thanks to everyone for all your posts & advice!

I am building an EPS Home Depot special & have had several “learning experiences” along the way - all in all, coming out better than I expected.

Yesterday & last night I did the lams - came out pretty good. Used RR with slow hardener & did an acid splash, I let the resin soak in before pushing it around too much. 3 layers 6oz on top & 2 layers 6 oz on bottom. Sealed the board prior with DAP fast & final.

I thought I had it all nailed until the hotcoat… but, when I went to hotcoat the top this morning (last to be lammed last night at 11 pm) I got the dreaded fisheyes / bubbles. I used RR and the fast hardener + appropriate amount of Additive F & followed the general directions from the Master Glasser DVD. Only touched the board with gloves. Lams were done in falling temps in doors (heated the room prior to lamming). This am I hot coated it indoors with constant temps - approx 76 degrees.

I found this old post from 2003 (after the fact) from Greg L.:

“Occasionally the fast hardener will fisheye even with additive F. I wish I could tell you why but I don’t know. We feel it must be some kind of contamination in the air and this only happens very seldom. For some reason if you mix in some slow hardener or just use slow, if you see the problem occuring, it doesn’t do it. I’ve only had it happen twice and what we did was to squeegee the resin off and shoot another hot coat right away with slow. I wish I could tell you more. The other solution is to baby sit the hot coat (continue brushing until the resin thickens). A pain in the ass, but that works too. If this happened more often I could tell you why, but the fast hardener is over a year old and we’ve just seen it twice so …??? Slow has never done this.”"

My lam may have been a bit dry - the EPS may have sucked in a lot of resin even though I sealed it (and probably sanded too much of it off). I’m going to do the bottom in the same conditions & will try it with the slow hardener.

Probably just a screw-up on my part, but what fun!

2

I have found that you have to brush the hotcoat on very slowly, if you move to

quickly you put air into the resin. Sounds like you did alot of research first so I am suprised this happened.

3

marke,

Thanks for the reply.

When I poured our the resin and tried to spread it it seemed a bit thicker. don’t know if it was the extra Add. F or not. I may have “thrashed” it around a bit rushing to get it all spread out prior to starting the cross strokes. The fisheyes/bubbles are more pronounced near the rails & tail - I do remember thinking I was running out of resin and probably did most of my extra brushing in those areas frantically trying to get it all spread out & see if I needed to mix up some more. Next time, I’m going to crack open a beer & take it slower…

Yet another thing to remember for the bottom hot coat - I will let eveyone know how it turns out.