I’ve searched the archives for this, I’m sure it’s there but I couldn’t find a concise post on it. Getting ready to get the gear to get started and am debating poly vs. epoxy. I guess I’m looking for the same thing everyone is, a board that is very strong and durable, has good non-yellowing properties and doesn’t weigh a ton. What is everyone’s opinions on which resin to use and why? What I have come up with so far is
Epoxy pros: Lightweight, Low VOCs, Strong, Good adhesion properties
Epoxy cons: More expensive, less UV resistant, more sensitive to mixing ratios, takes a week to fully cure
Poly Pros: Faster to set than epoxy, Slightly more UV resistant, Less expensive,
Poly Cons: Heavier than epoxy, Can only be used on poly blanks, increased VOCs (harmful to environment/requires better respirator)
So tell me if I have my facts straight and what you guys think. Or if there is an old post that i couldn’t find, by all means, please post the link. Thanks
Your assestment is correct. Here we go again. Are you going to glass the board yourself? Is your blank EPS or PU? I do both epoxy and PE. I like epoxy because the shelf life is very long. With PE, I want to use up my resin within four months. With UV PE resin I can lam glass a board,hot coat and install the fin plugs all in one afternoon. PE production is so much faster. Also color work with PE is so much nicer and easier to polish too than epoxy.
If your bottom line is to have a durable board, that is stronger, lighter and does not yellow, go with epoxy and have the blank foamed stained.
epoxy allows you to use extremely light core (EPS typically) then you can use beefy glassing schedules (material cost increase?) and still stay ultra lightwieght if you want, But I don’t think Is PE resin by itslef is any more heavy than epoxy by itself?
I think in comparing you have to also consider PE- UV cure as an option
Howzit uncled, First off I hope you are doing well these days and I don't know if I ever thanked you for coming to visit me in the hospital since it was so nice to have my Sway brothers come to see me. Your 2 cents is worth a lot more than 2 cents and I have been in touch with Halan and got him in touch with Steve Lis and Steve is going to shape him a fish.He said you are a a neighbor of his and I told him he was lucky since your are a competant builder who can help him with any questions he has for building aboard for himself when he gets back from the Middle East. Take care. Aloha,Kokua
I’ve only shaped and glassed 3 boards so far, after 2 I developed a really bad allergic reaction to the epoxy. Swollen and puffy eyes for about 3 weeks. No more epoxy for me. I used the epoxy for all the pros mentioned in the posts. The one con not mentioned was the one thing that happened to me. After talking with several longtime builders I found that rarely does anyone develop a sensitivity to poly, only epoxy.
You can’t UV cure epoxy but you can UV cure polyester. This is one of the drawcards for polyester I think. Fumes are much higher with PE than with epoxy though I have found. One downside with epoxy though is temperature. If it’s below 20 degrees celsius it becomes much harder to shift the resin.
PE you can just thin it down with more styrene. Epoxy is also more expensive per litre but you use less of it compared to PE. If you do use Epoxy though, I would highly recommend scales, because if you get the mix wrong, it will either go off way too hot or wont go off at all.
With UV cure PE, you might want to add a tiny bit of MEKP though so any drips that get on the floor do go off eventually if sunlight can’t get to them. Other than that you’ll have heaps of time to work with it, in fact pretty much unlimited time with UV cure PE if you don’t add a tiny bit of MEKP then just take it out into the sun when you’re finished.
Location matters. Brand matters. It's like telling me you own a Pick-up Truck or a SUV. Kia vs full size Ford is a big deal.
You have comments from all over the globe. People in Yugoslavia have pickup trucks....I bet they don't have Resin Research Epoxy resin....Buyer beware....
Yes you did thank me. I enjoyed your stories about Plastic Fantastic when I visited you. I welcome anyone over my place that wants to build boards. I take a few repair jobs from friends for real cheap to pay for my hobby. Tell my neighbor to come over when he has questions or just hang out.
Thanks very much for all the replies. To answer a few of those
questions. I’ll probably be using a PU blank, but will try to scale
down to the least dense. It is the most readily available for me.
Stingray, to answer your questions, I’m in Florida, so the temperatures should be warm enough (hopefully not too warm). I’ll be using a Teccel blank and am looking at either SS2000 Epoxy resin with SS2H30 Hardener from Surf Source, or Silmar Polyester Resin. Don’t know about using UV catylist with it as I’m hoping to put some titanium dioxide in to help it prevent yellowing and i understand that if you use that the UV light cannot penetrate enough to get it to kick off.
Certainly seems like more people are pro epoxy. Which is what I thought… just makes me wonder why the poly is still so prevalent. I guess it is cost and the time required to complete a project.
regardless of your decision on glassing, somebody should alert you – Teccel blanks are difficult to hand shape. Unless you’re having it cut for you on a machine, you might want to re-think that choice?
Howzit uncled, I am glad to hear I thanked you since as you probably remember I was pretty messedupon painmedicatiion and don't remember a lot of things about the hospital stay. I do remember you coming in my room and introducing yourself but after that things got a little hazzy and I drifted off to neverland. Aloha,Kokua
A'ole pilikia! (no problem)! You were fine under the cirumstances.
Getting back to the topic of epoxy vs. poly, the simple bottom line if you have an EPS blank use epoxy and if you have a PU blank use UV cure PE resin. I like to keep things simple. Sometimes we over anallyze things to death instead of just doing it. BTW, Fiberglass Hawaii has some EPS blanks on sale at the Wahiawa store. Longboards blanks are $60 and short boards are $30. I just picked up a 5'6" EPS for a min-simmons and a 9'1" for a big boy fun board. So I will be using epoxy for these boards.
Not sure how to do the gray box quotes… anyway… I can’t remember off the top of my head the order, but there are 3 or 4 different color ratings for various blanks’ densities.
Also, what makes the teccel blanks difficult to do by hand? I did read a post on that before but have read others say that they haven’t had problems.
Why were you trying to glass your eyes??:P Try putting in some agent F and the swelling will go down and you won't get blush either! PS: you use a LOT less epoxy when you lam and hot coat the board w/epoxy as compared to PU.
