I was talking to the guy I get epoxy and glass from and he was suggesting working the resin on from the inside, that is first put on the resin then the cloth. It should help the saturation and minimise air bubles, especially related to the glass I use (twill 6oz E-cloth). He confessed to not know much about surfboard building in particular, but epoxy/glass qualities in general.
Anyone have any input to this before I jump in at the deep end?
…yeah, works great with precut glass and exactly the same size blanks, so you have a production run going…
Unfortunately, doesn’t work at all with custom dimensions, as you can’t shift the glass around, cutting it messes up your scissors, and a squeegee presses the resin INTO the weave making lamination with good saturation a pretty normal deal.
I see what you meen, but could you not, in theory, cut the glass first, then remove glass, put on resin, lay on cloth and work it?
I havn’t got the magic additive F, (not that i’m sure that makes a diference at this stage) and the guy(seller) said that the tightness of the weave will make it hard to get the air out off, when it gets resin on it as it closes it up.
Well I know it is just a matter of practice makes perfect and I wont know till I go and all that, but with limited funds I really want to make it work!
Cheers
In theory, a bumblebee cannot fly.
Theory is what you learn in school. Most of it has to adapted for use on society.
No, practically it cannot be done. You can never place the cloth back on in exactly thye same place as it was after you cut it. And wet under, you can’t really adjust anything.
Every glasser uses a squeegee to push resin between the weave, and to saturate the cloth.
You might try that.
Sure you can… just roll the cloth up- from the nose to the tail or whatever, then unroll it back onto the board when you need it, using your squeegie to iron out the wrinkles as you go. Laminators do it all the time to put logos under the glass. And yea, the max that they roll up is half the boards length, but I’m sure with a bit of careful planning you could make it work. -Carl
Yeah, especially on your first glass job!
And your first writing job, you write GoneWithTheWind!
Your first ever wave, you rollercoaster at MaaleaBay, and make it …
Your first motocross race, you win…
Your first date, you score a home run…
Sure, dream on!
…and when laminators peel back the glass to install logos, they first have already saturated the deck of the other part with resin, so the glass doesn’t shift around!!!
Hey Jolly,
For your first glass job just stick to the basics, once you work out how to get that off pat, or you feel more comfortable, then try different things. I’d hate you to stuff things up get disenchanted with glassing, especially after shaping a board for the first time…
Good luck, can’t wait to hear how you go.
There seems to be a bit of disagreement here! I have painted the blank with epoxy then draped the cloth ( rolling it from a rack) over the board cut it to shape while the epoxy soaked into the cloth. A light pass with the squeegy (and this is on the deck) then lay another layer of cloth and clean up the whole lam. Using this method I do not have to add much more epoxy and it flows from the inside out. (Ok Greg quit laughing) You really can’t force epoxy though cloth like you can poly. If you try the taditional method let the epoxy soak into the cloth before you remove the excess. It seemed to me that by when I painted the blank first I eliminated bubbles around the rail area and reduced the amount of air I got in the epoxy when using the squeegy.
er… those of you who know me, know I’m not an epoxy guy. However, I did watch Greg Loehr lam a board with epoxy at the Cerritos College event a while back. He had 3 layers of glass on the board, and (as I recall) he flipped the glass over longwise (parallel to the stringer) and poured epoxy onto the blank, spread it around, then pulled the glass back into place. Then squeegeed more in from the top. SO, it certainly can be done this way if necessary.
Here’s a link to the photo: http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=9777;
Guys!
This is the FIRST glass job, not the 22,000ths.
There is no overhanging roller to precisely drop the cloth into position!
Original questionaire is a novice asking advice from a boat builder who never tried glassing a surfboard!
I’m no expert on epoxy, but have watched a former sailboard builder laminate at least 15 epoxy sailboards, and I have laminated 4 epoxy kiteboards, all with easy saturation of double laminates.
Gravity might not penetrate the cloth, but a squeegee is recommended.
If you really can’t use a squeegee for some reason, a roller works equally well, but not better.
Howdy Lee. I said it CAN be done that way, not that it SHOULD be done that way.
How’s this for advice for the newbie? Don’t use twill weave cloth!
My bad…
I was just answering JollyRogers specific situation, not expousing on theory and possibilities. I’ve seen production glassing facilities use what JR theorized, but his situation is not the same.
Twill cloth does need more saturation, so slow batch, TLC, and a roller for novices might be one answer.
The other answer is to lay cloth down, put resin on half the board, lift up half that is not wet, wet blank, lay down dry cloth, then lift wet side to wet out dry blank on other side, then squeegee over the whole blank.
That seems anal and too much work, so I suggest squeegee at 30 degrees.
Keith is right. I did do it this way at Cerritos and the reason was that the cloth available was Impact Glass which is really hard to wet. I knew I wasn’t going to wet the foam through two layers of the stuff so I wet under first. This made the laminate go real easy and I got nice results. I’ve used this method for 30 years, learned it from Fred Grossgrietz (sp?) for doing Kevlar laminates. I like this a bit more than the roll up method, which I’ve used also. Seems I can work faster and the cloth stays straighter.
Tuna, I have also glassed with your method. Pretty easy but a bit time consuming. Lee’s right, you do have to have the cloth on a roll to use this method and you should have a slow hardener. Comes out real nice though, especially if your only doing one or two boards.
For standard lay-up with standard surfboard fabrics I usually just wet from the top as Lee suggests. In my experience wetting under first is for special applications or when using difficult fabrics. Nice additional technique to know that keeps you from looking like you don’t know what your doing when faced with a difficult lamination.
The glass doesn’t have to line up perfectly. I’ve done this several times for sailboards with epoxy over eps. I roll the glass on the dry board, cut the laps with an extra inch from a masking tape lap line around the rail then roll the dry glass back up from tail to nose on a piece of 3/4" pvc. I have ~30" long piece of 8" pvc pipe, capped on both ends and cut in half lengthwise. Put the glass roll in that and heap on the epoxy, slow cure variety, and thoroughly saturate the glass. With a little calculation you can determine how much epoxy is needed. Pull the dripping roll out, lay on the nose and carefully roll down the board, squeege as you go. Once its all smooth, let it gel, do a cut lap along the masking tape line. Presto. Now have a few beers cause its a real pain.
I second Greg’s comment about pre-wetting when you have a cloth that’s difficult to wet through.
I my case I had to lay some thick glass mat on a boat I was fixing up. Mat can be real difficult to wet out, though eventually it would saturate. So I slopped resin onto the surface, laid the glass, and slopped more resin on top. Sure it was a resin-rich job, but I wanted/expected that. It didn’t help that due to odd shapes and limited work access, I was using a paintbrush with the resin.
Would I pre-wet a board? Only for a laminate. I routinely lam two layers of 6 ounce E glass on decks, no problem there, but a newbie would likely experience some shifting of one or both layers, until he got the hang of it.
I haven’t worked with epoxy, but from what I read, it’s slow to wet through glass, so the pre-wet approach seems likely to be a useful idea.
JollyRoger -
MrJ (AKA Michael Jones) has worked out something that might work…
He saturates the full width cloth on a wetout table before transferring to the board and squeegeeing. He trims the overlap with scissors before laminating to the underside.
The only problem I have with this method is that it wastes a little resin on cloth that gets trimmed off and tossed. Greg Loehr’s recommended amounts of resin would have to be increased a little to do it this way.
For details, check MrJ’s posts… he has laid out some details that are worth reviewing.
Photo below taken from Swaylocks archives…
Right! I really appreciate all of you taking the time to go through some methods that might work!
I think I might be going overkill with theory as I’m waiting for my epoxy to be delivered, and it will all be much clearer when the stuff arrives and I get my hands in it!
I will try and do some recording of my going along, and post it!
Thanks for the invaluabel help guys!
Cheers
This is the FIRST glass job, not the 22,000ths.
It’s still not rocket science.
But since it’s the first glass job, chances are it will be a mess no matter what.
regards,
Håvard