Hello all. I glass all of my boards with epoxy, and since switching over from poly i have used nothing but RR. However, a friend had some SS 2000 epoxy from surfsource laying around, and he had asked me to do a board for him and glass it using his resin, so I figured, why not? So the lam of the board goes as planned, and I hotcoat the bottom fine. After a few hours, I flip and hotcoat the top as usual. After I finish up, I go and hop in the shower to clean up, thinking I am done. I get out of the shower and check the board, and almost fall over, haha. The HC had seperated, creating an almost giant spiderweb of epoxy, with everything in between showing the lam. What the hell happened,and how do I fix it??
Surfsource SS 200 epoxy.
Clean brush, clean board, with denatured alcohol.
Room temp about 78 degrees(same as the fist side)
Any ideas??
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: It has now been about 2 hours since the HC and the HC is still gooey. It seems like it is not going to harden. Any ideas.
The good laminators I know that do epoxies, have noticed more fisheyes and other problomatic symtems from pre-cleaning with alcohol. The alcohol isn’t 100% pure to start with, has an infinty to attract water. Instead of an alcohol wipe, I use #80 or #100 by hand and do a nice sand before hotcoating, I do get the occasional fisheye still, but haven’t had a problem with going off. I did try to conserve my hardner, as I was not winding up with enough to do an entire system,I cut back on it by a small percentage, the result was a more rubbery hotcoat, although it did go off, now I stick to the books and keep it strictly at 2 to one
Jim, thanks for your input. The alcohol thing may have been the problem, and I usually sand my lams real nice before the HC anyway, to try and minimize the sanding I have to do later, so maybe the alcohol wipe is overkill. I am just paranoid about contamination, which obviously doesn’t make a difference because I had this problem anyway. The thing that got me was that this was no normal fisheye. The weave was showing thru the hotcoat all over the place. Little circles, maybe between 1/2 inch and 1 1/2 inches of weave were showing all over the place…
By the time I got up this morning the faulty HC had hardened, so rather than try and mess with it, and because I wasn’t sure that it had hardened properly, I just re-hotcoated on top, and it filled in OK, although it had the same seperation problem again, I just babysat it and mixed some extra resin and filled it all in even.
Come to think of it, before the faulty HC, I had switched to the second 1/4 gal hardner container that came with my friends 1 1/2 gallon set. It was sealed, but could there have been a problem with the hardner??
Howzit?!? The couple of times that I experienced the ‘fisheye’ problem, (when doing the hot coat) I used a little more ‘elbow grease’, and kind of scrubbed the area with the brush. Went and finished it off like normal, and had no more problems. Aloha…RH
Your lam also could have had amines (blush) rising to the surface. Did it feel slick, almost wet, even after full cure? If so, you need to wash it off & then give it time (more than 24 hrs) & heat & dry atmosphere…
Heating the hotcoating resin has helped my quality greatly. Haven’t had a fisheye or a separation or a draining rail in 3 or 4 boards…
Use Additive F from RR. It works with SurfSource’s epoxy. I had blush and fisheye problems with it no matter what prep work I did prior to hotcoating until I used that magic elixir. Most consistent fix for fisheyes for me.
Thanks for the replys. Benny, you may be right. Blushing is caused by humidity, right?? Because that may have been the problem. I do heat my HC resin as well. Rick, I used your technique and kinda took care of it this morning. Surfthis, you are right. That is why I use nothing but RR. Maybe my friend will start using RR as well after this.