Just finished up a repair to a cracked rail on my Bill Hamilton 9’2". The board has a Hawaiian cloth inlay on the rails and I was a bit worried about how the repair would look. Ended up pretty good! I want to gloss coat it now, do I need a special resin or is there something I can do to the clear sanding resin? Any tips would be appreciated!
Just plain old sanding resin, plus a few drops of acetone or styrene for the small batch you’ll be using, do a fairly hot batch 'cos you’ll be putting it on thin. I generally shoot for something about the consistency of cream before adding the catalyst.
hope that’s of use
doc…
Thanks Doc, but I’m a bit confused. If you wait until you get the consistancy of cream before you add the catalyst, what thickens the resin, the Acetone? Do you tape around the edges (within a 1/2 in or so?) and wait for it to gel and pull the tape? How much sanding (wet?) do you do and when. Thanks for all your wisdom!
In nothing resembling order:
Wisdom, no. Years of mistakes repeated again and again because I’m not too bright, yes. Eventually it sinks in, even in my wee bitty brain. But it does take a while.
Add acetone drop by drop, stirring constantly until you get the consistency of cream or half and half cream to be more exact. The catalyst will thin it further before it starts to react with the resin and make it harden, but that’s how to do it. The other thing is that if you thin the resin before adding catalyst, you have less time pressure to get it mixed right before it starts to harden and become unworkable/unusable. Same deal with cabosil and other additives, make your mix first, then stir in the catalyst.
I tend to run the gloss ( use a throwaway natural bristle ‘chip’ brush, 1" or wider used gently to minimise brush marks. And comb it some with a fine comb to get the loose bristles out, lest they find their way into the gloss and drive you mad) up onto the tape rather than trying to feather it out before I get to the tape. That way, I can kinda push excess resin off the board and onto the tape, to kinda work it thinner at the edges with the brush rather than trying to fade it to nothing on the board itself, if that makes sense.
I do wait for it to gel a little before pulling the tape, just when it starts to gel, the edges of the gloss will kinda fall down and make a smooth edge, but I was recently turned on to a new idea, touch it with some 80 grit right then too, along the edges ( see the Archives for my comeuppance and education ) that will bring down the edges and make for much less sanding later - if it’s done right the sanding marks go away like brush marks. Brush a little on a smooth surface to give you a ‘touch it and see’ so you’re not checking it on the board and adding fingerprints and such - the side of a wax paper cup is prolly ideal.
Wet sanding - if I get it wrong, I wind up doing 150 through 600 grit over the whole thing, followed by polishing. If I get it right I can pretty much leave it be, mebbe a skosh of polishing along the edges. I hate to say it, but plan on sanding the whole thing - it’s one of those deals where timing and experience make a lot of difference and even then ( granted, senility and accumulated resin fumes are having their effect ) I get it wrong about half the time.
hope that’s of some use
doc…
Feathering a repair to a seamless gloss takes some practice. I use a small (maybe 3/4" X 3") sanding block of hardwood with wet/dry sand paper on it. Keep the block on the repaired area - try to stay off the original glossed area surrounding the repair as much as possible. If you sand the repair slightly below flush before glossing you will run less risk of sand throughs that expose the weave. If you expose the weave, you have a choice of reglossing and trying again, smearing on a couple layers of acrylic floor polish or spraying with some clear acrylic. For me, it kind of depends on the board. If it’s a brand new buffed out longboard with it’s first ding, I try harder to make it look pretty.