I’m trying to make some fins using ply wood and RR epoxy. I put these fins on the dryer in an attempt to keep the tempature up. After 2 hours at 80 F they haven’t even begun to harden, i can blow the drops of epoxy around on the wax paper. i used a 60 ml syringe to measure out the 2:1 ratio so i figured i shouldn’t be off by more than .5 ml. I also added about 1 cc of additive F to the mix. When i touched the fins they didn’t feel tacky, but when i tried to cut the fiberglass the cloth just shifted, no stiffness at all. I sanded the fins with 50 grit, and touched them up with 100 grit, is it possible that the 100 grit just made the fins to smooth to allow for a bond? sorry still on my first board learning from mistakes.
any chance you did 2:1 as in hardener:resin by accident? Did you stir the epoxy really well?(I do at least 150 stirring strokes, sometimes more) And the other thing is that the slow hardener can take a really long time so set up sometimes, if that’s what you used. Check it in the morning.
Sorry, i used fast hardner and .5-1.0 ml of additive F so 90.5 to 91 ml total mixture. I mixed it for two min, I guess its possible that i did 2:1 hardner to resin, but i really don’t think that happened, even put my own lables on the smaller cups before drawing the resin/hardner with the syringe.
what the crap… i had problems with my lamination too, figured i just screwed it up. is it possible for epoxy to go bad? Just pealed the cloth of one of the fins, no adheasiveness at all, what the hell.
Plusoneshaper George said it: they could have mislabeled along the road.
Just go get your containers and see if the RESIN has the same viscosity [fluidity] as the HARDENER. if they both are super fluid, they both are HARDENER.
It happened to me too, i freaked out on a small part on one ordered surfboard, and had to wait weeks here in Europe to get the Resin delivered. I did claim and receive a tail pad and a leash for their mistake though for it fucked up part of the board [it was my mistake too, but if you do not know the stuff, it is hard to know for sure… my first thought was WOW, this RR epoxy is super impregnating, what a great product… just to freak out when my FAST hardener was still soft the next day] I didn’t sleep that night.
My lesson learnt [one that i still haven’t mastered] = Be sure about what you use: is it really epoxy, or EPS, or … TEST before you go into action. Better safe than sorry. But then again, it is impossible to do so for everything.
1 possibility i though of is the resin and hardner were in my garage and probably in the 60’s. I left the fins over night still didn’t harden. As for mislabeling it appears the my hardner is slightly more viscous than the resin can anyone verify if that is correct. thanks for the help.
5 grams of hardener, means that you use 10grams of resin, a total of 15 kg… maybe you added the resin on top of hardener and weighed a 1 to 1 ratio only.
So i mixed up another batch, 40ml resin, 20 ml hardner 1ml additive F. I wiped everything down with denatured alcohol and tried again. 1.5 hours later same results. I left the remainder of the mixed resin in the cup and it is still pretty viscous (i can swirl it around in the cup). Not having worked with Resin Research Epoxy before is there any simple way to tell if i perhaps received 2 parts resin, or 2 parts hardner instead of one of each?
As for mislabeling it appears the my hardner is slightly more viscous than the resin can anyone verify if that is correct. thanks for the help.
It sounds like mislabeling to me. The resin should be much more viscous than the hardener, especially at 60 degrees F. To put that another way: the resin is thick, the hardener is runny. If you have something different I’d call whomever you ordered your epoxy from to clear it up.
i thought about it today… and now that you said it probably gonna give it a try. I figure what the hell its not working now and if the reverse 2:1 works at least i can tell them what happened.
no, the resin isn’t noticeably thicker than the hardner, it was definatly a judgement call. I’m going to give fiberglass supply a call tomorrow and see if they can help me out. I keep trying to think of how i could have ended up with these results twice by my own mistakes and after the help here on swaylocks i honestly think i have two parts of the same thing.
