After spending a great deal of time perfecting the shape of my new board and then making a really nice job of my first airbrush paintjob I glassed the underside and the resin went off way faster than usual for some reason. (I must have got the mix slightly wrong but I thought I only put 1.5% catalyst in) Anyway the result was PANIC!!! I managed to wet out the underside enough but didn’t manage to get the laps completely in time and ended up with very ‘lumpy’ rails which required careful and tedious ammounts of sanding. I am now at the stage where I have a few large areas of airbubbles along the rails which will spoil the board if left as they are. The rails are a light blue and I was wondering if there is any reason why I can’t go over the lapped rail with a coat of the same colour paint before I glass the deck of the board and therefore would have a panel of paint between the laps masking the air bubbled patches. Would this be the best solution? Any ideas anyone?
If the rails are really bad, one alternative would be to take off the entire layer of galss and begin anew. However that would mean sacrificing your color work most likely. As for painting after you lam, yes you can do it. I have done this a few times on the rails to even the color out. Though it looks very fake and the rails somehow come out looking like they are made of plastic Good luck
Fill the big bubbles with hot coat, sand smooth, spray / feather the rails with your blue color, and gloss. Or you can use automotive clear coat UPOL #1 as your gloss, it polishes out just like gloss and is really, really tough. And best of all if you having a hard time with kick times and laminating, this stuff is really easy to use, just spray it on. It will be very hard to tell the screw up if you feather the color properly. -Jay
Years ago I had a longboard start to kick way too soon, I had done everything normal, but it went about 5 minutes too soon. I got one rail under and about half the other, to try to finish the rail would have trapped gelling resin and more bubbles under the cloth. The board had extensive spray graphics on the deck lap area, after it had set up, I flipped it over and painted a coat of lam resin along the foam next to the lap and the area where the laps SHOULD have been. This made for an eraser shield to keep the color from getting hit, now it was on to the careful part of getting the hanging lap sanded off and then cleaning up all the globs, bubbles and floats. When I was satisfied with my job, I glassed back in the area that didn’t get covered the first time, pasted in the spots that still had micro bubbles open from the sanding, then did the deck. It came out looking great, you couldn’t tell it was ready for the scrap heap a few days before. I sent it to a sports show in San Fran and got burned by the rep on it, so I should had trashed it in the first place
I use something more like .8 percent in low 80’s temps and about 70 percent humidity, to get a decent longboard single lam 6 oz. pot life of about 20 minutes. There are, of course, more “other factors” than I can count, but here are some: 1. Apparently you are measuring your catalyst ratio carefully. Good work, keep it up, write down someplace the ratio and results so you can check it next time. 2. Information I have seen suggests the best strength at about 1 percent catalyst, of course your manufacturer may have other ideas. I would like to think that a little slower is better than a little faster, as you found out. I would have to chill my resing to safely use 1 percent, and I’m not prepared to do that yet; just using about .8 percent will give me (barely) adequate pot life. 3. Beginners usually have little technique and are really slow. If you’ve watched an experienced glasser he’s a hell of a lot faster than a beginner, and this is a significant factor in having resin go off when you’re not used to it. 4. I have just used up a 5 gallon can of lam resin and it seems the last gallon or so went off faster than I expected. I can’t measure it, but this may have been your case also. My resin was to the point where I had to strain it through some window screen to remove a few lumps. Six months is about all the shelf life you can hope for. In Honolulu, Fiberglass Hawaii dates all the cans of resin they sell, and I check the date since I make only just enough boards to use the five gallons in six to seven months.
I’m glassing in low to mid sixties most of the time especially now when thats about the max temp that I can get my garage to using the small radiator I use. So what do you think are good ratios in this temp to give myself a couple of extra minutes? By the way I think you are probably right and the resin shelf life was up!
Howzit Charlie, Another trick is to shake the container occasionally to keep the chemicals evenly distributed. But in my shop 5 gallons only lasts about 3 weeks. Another tip is you can figure UV resin has about half the shelf life of non UV resin. Aloha, Kokua
low to mid sixties should allow plenty time at 0.8 to 1.0 percent. Remember to carefully measure your resin and catalyst. I use any-kine clean glass bottles, but I put a strip of tape on the side, then fill with water cup by cup, marking the level after each cup. Then empty, dry, use. I measure catalyst with a syringe. They’re cheap enough at the drugstore, $1.89 at Long’s in my case. 1 cc equals one milliliter. Look up your metric conversions in the Joy of Cooking, seems to me that 1 cup equals 273 cc but better check me there. Kokua, my last 5-gal can had the crystals forming on the underside of the lid, this suggests that evaporation of something, followed by condensation on the lid, has something to do with crystal formation. If evaporation is part of the problem, then shaking or stirring won’t help. Still, sounds like a good idea anyway and wouldn’t hurt.
I have been using 8cc to the quart and this gives me about 12 minutes. I have a little kitchen timer that I set to 10 minutes, add catalyst & stir about 1 minute and start. When the timer goes off I know I have 2 minutes or so to finish up. First batch I made was @1.5% (12cc’s/Qt) and it went off while I was still placing logo’s…3 minutes! Knowing the kick time helps me to clean up laps and I don’t have to constantly watch them for drips. No one has mentioned it but resin thickness shortens the kick time. What’s left in the pail will kick a little sooner due to cocentrated heat. I use paper buckets and I mark them with a pencil on the inside using a ruler. I measured with water & now I know. 2 1/2" is 1 qt…3 1/2" is 1 1/2 qts etc. (this is in a 53 oz bucket) MLC
Like Drew I’d suggest ripping off all the glass (very carefully) I removed the glass of a very old bulky 7’3" I re-shaped it and it’s now a neat little 6’10" and it’s due to be re-glassed next time I return home. Just be really careful when stripping glass. You will probably have to do a little bit of sanding and the chances are you could loose a tiny bit of thickness from the bland and a little width as well but in my opinion thats alot better than a board with poor quality reails.
That’s interesting… I looked up my records and my numbers are different. Back in april I glassed a shortboard at mid-day with 12-15 cc for 3/4 qt. and it went off perfect. In July I did an LB in early evening with 12 cc for 1 1/2 qt. and it was OK In september I did a mini-gunn, for 1 1/8 qts using 15cc was a little fast for the deck but 12 cc was good for the bottom. On November 1, it was a cold day, and 12 cc for a little less that 1 qt. was too slow for me. …I know my skill has increased a lot, and I’m definately a faster glasser, which explains the decreasing amounts in the last 3 - but the shorty I did in april confuses me… that’s a lot of catalyst. My notes say that it was “sunny”, but I unfortunately didn’t have a thermometer at the time. I’m wondering if there is a lot of variability in the dilution or quality of the MEKP?
Howzit Rook, Back when I used catalyst to kick my resin,(I still do on occasion,gotta keep the edge) I found that having a thermometer and a hygrometer( Measures humidity) helped immensly for figuring out how much catalyst to use.What was scary was when I’d check the hygrometer and it would read 110% humidity. Seems like that would be impossible but since it’s Kauai, one of the wettest spots on earth I guess anything is possible. Needless to say when the humidity gets to that point I look for something else to do in the shop. I know I could load up on the catalyst but I figure the blank is absorbing some of the moisture in the air and that doesn’t make for good laminating conditions.Aloha, Kokua
So I just made a ballsup like “anonymous”
Im sitting here Fuming at my stupidity… my bottom lam was wetted out but the laps not even wet when the resin started to kick.
I abandoned mission and pulled the cloth off. My question, will the resin remaining on the foam go yellow and crack? There is only a bit on there but its going to spoil my nice paint job and be a big task to sand it off. I wonder If I can just start fresh when its cured?
Any Ideas?
Yes, Go ahead and lam over it. No sanding. If you sand it you will just tear up the foam.
Just pretend it is a clear foam stain.
Thanks everysurfer. Its reasuring hearing this from you. Do you think the bit of resin on there will yellow quicker?
I will lam her nice and carefully tomorrow morning and make realy sure I use the correct ratio catylist.