Well I tried mixing alcohol with the epoxy – problem I had was I ended up with spots in the finish where the epoxy didn’t fill into … and had to go back and get them with another coat.
Next coat tried heating. Works better but gotta work very fast or that reaction will get away from you in that cup …
But I still can’t get it to level perfectly, and still the little dots here and there … and yes I did clean it very thoroughly, wiped with xylene, alcohol, and tack cloth.
I’m gonna stick with a sanded finish on this, or maybe use the concrete sealer again. Or I suppose I could buff it … but that’s a lot of work too … maybe just stick with sanded … I don’t think I can buff it outside in this cold, and buffing is too much a mess to bring it in the house.
Otherwise it’s ready to go – once the leash plug dries up here, I’m gonna take it out and power sand the whole thing, then wet sand it out down to 600, and maybe farther (but I’d have to run to town to get the paper to take it past 600.)
Weighs in at 18 lb. before sanding … a tad on the heavy side for an 8’ probably, but the extra weight should make it paddle faster and bulldoze through any chop with ease.
I’m no expert, but from you’re description I would say that the ‘craters’ (spots that the epoxy didn’t fill into) would be caused by contanmination. I would not use a tack cloth, or if I did, before hitting with alcohol.
I had a few good glosscoats (all with pinlines) and then I did one where I used a different sandpaper to sand down the acrylic pinlines. As it was setting, I could see all these spots where it looked like the epoxy was pulling away from itself leaving these craters behind. I had previously just used left over sanding disk from my random orbital, but this time went and bought some paper from a hardware store. According to some of the people on here some papers hare stearated (wax added) and this will leave nehind residue. I could imagine that a tack cloth is going to leave behind some kind of oily residue as well.
I am still trying to get a good ‘wet gloss’ look on my boards, but I think it is just a case of some elbow grease. I sure wish I had a sander/polisher though. …Soon…
Any dots, or pimples on the board is probably dust. They usually sand out pretty well.
Clean the board with a mild liquid car wash detergent or Dawn dishwashing liquid. Gets the oils, will not take off acrylic pinlines/graphics. Dry off, and then I get the lint from drying the board off with a microfiber tack cloth, not the waxy/sticky ones. Use gloves to dry off the board and for the tack cloth. You don’t want oil anywhere.
Tape off, also use gloves for this (I know, a serious pain, as the tape sticks to the gloves VERY well).
Do this in a room where there are no air currents, and around 75 deg F.
Measure the resin, and microwave it for 2 secs per ounce of resin. Add the following (for RR Epoxy):
1cc Add F per ounce of resin (make sure the Add F is warm, so that the solids don’t precipitate out)
1-1.5cc Denatured Alcohol per ounce of resin
However much hardener you need for the resin
Mix thoroughly, the mix should be thin enough so that bubbles should not be a problem. Using a clean brush, get the stuff on there, pouring a bead of resin and following with the brush. Once the board has resin all over it, then do your cross strokes and walkout.
Look at the coat carefully for fisheyes/craters/separations (you should not have any if you cleaned the board right). if you see any, get some resin from the bucket and drip a drop into the fisheye. It makes for a little more sanding later, but better than a fisheye.
Last thing, pass over the coat with a heatgun. Very carefully. Bubbles you did not know were there will pop all over the place. Too light/fast a pass, no bubbles pop. Too slowly, and you put a nice, wavy, cratered texture in your leveling coat. Practice on scraps first.
Walk Away. Whatever is going to happen at this point, will happen whether or not you keep messing with it. You can generally only make things worse at this point.
Once the resin is mixed, everything should take less than 15 minutes.
Use 2020 resin instead of 2000. I use a bit more Additive F … 1.5 - 2 cc’s per ounce of hardener. You can also rub out epoxy glosses by sanding to 1500 before polishing.
Does 2020 go on easier, or cure harder to facilitate a good gloss? I thought it was the more flexible/softer of the resins, so I figured it would be harder to polish out. Apparently, I may be very mistaken.
My concern is similar to Max’s. I’m going to do an epoxy board and was thinking of doing either 2000 or 2020 for the lam and sanding coat, then maybe follow that with 1980 for gloss. I wasn’t sure yet but I was assuming that the 1980 would sand and polish better because it’s lower modulus and description of high gloss on your website.