Couple of quick questions: I did my first glassing over weekend (used epoxy) and may have pulled too much resin off during the hotcoat/sandcoat.
How smooth should the board be at this point? I still have roughish texture on the deck – although the rails are on the smooth side. Should I start to sand and see if weave starts to show or put another coat on to be safe?
If you think that you are going to hit the weave then you probably will. Probably the best bet is to sand down the coat that you just layed on, if only to take the shinies away and provide a good base for the next layer of hotcoat to stick to. Or if you are glossing then do the same thing, just substitute a gloss resin for the final coat.
If you leave sand throughs on the final product, no matter how tiny they are, they will attract water like mad and turn brown and ugly and lose strentght and eventually delaminate or at least weaken the structural strength significantly to cause crack and stresses and eventually your board will look like it has poop all over it.
I always squeegee my lam coats really dry, then brush a semi thin hot coat on, leaving the weave pattern to show after hot cures.
Knowing I have complete saturation on lam coat, and also knowing the weave itself is NOT showing, only the hot coat resin resting atop the weave, I sand that part of the board semi lightly, not grinding into the cloth.
About 70 of my boards, finished after applying the hotcoat showing weave, are finished and thrown into the water, with no problems.
Some are sanded and glossed, for customers, and still no problems.
Key is saturation of lam coat…must be complete, no air bubbles, no pinbubbles.
For me, leaving enough resin to cover the weave, anywhere on the board, is cause for future problems, or too much resin/glass ratio.
Thanks – I’m pretty sure that I have what Lee describing: I felt really good about my initial lam saturation, and it seems as the hotcoat is sitting sitting atop the weave just as he describes (there is no visually exposed cloth/weave – it all looks to be under a layer of glass).
Could I
A: Light sand (since it’s epoxy and more than 24 hours), do another hotcoat, install fins, sand, gloss, and ride. My concerns are it will be too heavy.
B: Install fins, sand as Lee says, gloss, and ride. Concerned I’ll do sand throughs and weaken the board.
Sorry for making this out to more than it probably is - it’s my first board and so far it is coming out so much better than I ever imagined. I’ve never sanded a full board before, never seen one in lam stage, hotcoat stage, etc. and want to move on the conservative side. Just keeping waiting for myself to do something to mess her up.