I remember reading on a couple threads here that the secret to a good gloss with RR epoxy is a long cure and double amount of additive F.
What I’m still unclear about is the “double” part. Is that double the lam amount of 1ml/oz, or double the “Doubled” amount of 2ml/oz? Do I add 4ml/oz for gloss?
2 ml/oz
Also, heat up the resin ahead of time to keep its viscosity as low as possible. Watery resin with lots of surfacing agent.
So then, with RR epoxy gloss is essentially the same as hotcoat, just polished out?
That’s what I needed to know, thanks blakesta!
Just discovered yet another reason to love using epoxy…
I laid out my gloss coat, stroked it out all even, then noticed a big hand-shaped spot beginning to shed resin like water off a duck’s back. After I got done weeping with visions of further hours of sanding dancing in my head, it occured to me that I could still remove the resin. So I did. I scraped most of it off with a plastic spreader I use for laminations, then scrubbed the rest off with a bunch of paper towels and alcohol. Five minutes with some 220 to take off the residue and freshen up the surface (wearing gloves this time!), another wipedown with the alcohol to clean up, and I’m ready to try again!
If it had been using poly, I’d have been royally screwed.
Howzit Shwuz, How did you prep the board you glossed the first time. I always wash with grease cutting dish soap which removes most contaminants. When you rinse off the soap you watch for any spots that the water sheds off and clean those spots with acetone if you are using poly and if it’e epoxy use what ever works best. Then rewash and rinse and check again before glossing. Aloha,Kokua
before the next go-round of glossing, try giving it a light sand, blow it off, and then wipe it all down with denatured alcohol.
I used K.'s method a while back, for glossing a set of fins I’d laid up…worked real well, especially the part about checking it with the water shedding, stubborn spots show easily…I used a sponge with the green abrasive on one side, with grease cutting dishsoap…
The next board I do I will make sure and always wear gloves until it’s done…hard not to fondle, however…
sanded my hotcoat 120-grit [with 1,5 *times Additif F]
dusted off
vacuum cleaned
used denaturated alcohol
light strokes with a sticky towel
Still 1001 fisheyes
What is the solution now?
Need help
Hey Wouter,
I feel your pain…hopefully you got the epoxy off with a squeegee before it cured…if so, roughen it up tomorrow with some 150 or 220, and go again, it will work great…
Questions for you, though, to help figure out what did it.
Any acrylic paint/clear on the hotcoat? Denatured alcohol will dissolve acrylic and spread it all over the board, could be a problem. I will never use Aervoe clear spraycan acrylic again for that reason…
Did you use a tack cloth (sticky towel)? Could have left residue, but not sure. I use kokua’s tape trick now instead, run the tape sticky-side down the length of the board to pick up any towel lint, dust, etc.
Temp outside? If it is too hot, or if you left the board to cure in the sun, fisheyes guaranteed, the resin becomes too fluid and just wants to run off the board, separating/fisheyeing as it does so…
Did you see the fisheyes right away, like a few seconds after the brush went by, or did everything look great, and then when you came back to pull tape, disaster?
JSS
Thanks man!
Hey Wouter,
I feel your pain…hopefully you got the epoxy off with a squeegee before it cured…if so, roughen it up tomorrow with some 150 or 220, and go again, it will work great…
Questions for you, though, to help figure out what did it.
- Any acrylic paint/clear on the hotcoat? Denatured alcohol will dissolve acrylic and spread it all over the board, could be a problem. I will never use Aervoe clear spraycan acrylic again for that reason… 1. ZERO ACRYLIC
- Did you use a tack cloth (sticky towel)? Could have left residue, but not sure. I use kokua’s tape trick now instead, run the tape sticky-side down the length of the board to pick up any towel lint, dust, etc.
2. VERY VERY LIGHTLY, NO PRESSURE USED WITH THE TACKY CLOTH. TAPE SOUNDS GOOD THOUGH.
3. Temp outside? If it is too hot, or if you left the board to cure in the sun, fisheyes guaranteed, the resin becomes too fluid and just wants to run off the board, separating/fisheyeing as it does so…
3. 24 DEGREES CELSIUS HUMIDITY AROUND 68-75%
- Did you see the fisheyes right away, like a few seconds after the brush went by, or did everything look great, and then when you came back to pull tape, disaster? 4. STRAIGHT AWAY
What now? Soap trick? rough sand?
JSS
Its all in the prep in my opinion. Fisheyes that immediately form are most likely caused by surface contamination.
I’ve had good luck sanding my hot coats down to 180 grit, then blowing or vacuuming off all the dust. From that point I will put on nitrile gloves and completely wipe the board down with DNA and dry it new clean rag. I never reuse my rags for gloss prep and I rinse the new rags out with clean water and let them air dry to make sure any manufacturing contamination is removed. I will then tape off the board and use a tack clothe to wipe off the board and make sure any lint from the rags is removed.
I mix the gloss in a new mix pot (plastic metered variety) with a new wood stirrer, and use a new 3" chip brush to apply. Mix slowly as not to introduce air into the resin. I pour my resin onto the board evenly down the stringer and take two slow even brush strokes across the width of the board to spread the gloss. Then I take once brush stroke in each direction lengthwise to finish it off. Don’t overwork the resin and make it frothy. It will level out on its own provided you brushed it to a more or less even thickness.
I would focus on the prep work though from the sound of it, treat it like an operating room and you wont go wrong. I might be overkilling it on the prep and cleanliness but I come from an automotive finish background and you can’t afford to ruin a $10,000+ House of Kolor paint job because you just assumed the prep was good enough so I treat my glassing the same way.
Jon
OK, last few questions: How long had it been since the hotcoat was sanded? That’s the only thing I can think of, other than some kind of interaction with the tack cloth adhesive/resin/wax. If you sanded the hotcoat the day after hotcoating, but it sat for a few weeks before glossing, you’d have to sand/scuff it again before gloss.
Also, did you scrape/squeegee the fisheyed coat off before it cured?
Did you warm the resin before you brushed it on?
When you blew the board off with compressed air, did you have an oil filter in line?
Last one: How much did ungloved hands touch the board after sanding? If it was a lot, a quick denatured alcohol wipe just spread those oils everywhere; you have to do it several times to get the oil, and you’ll never get all of it. The denatured alcohol puts the oils in solution, which the towel absorbs, but there is always some alcohol laeft on the board, and when it evaporates, the oils it had in solution stay on the surface. The wash with dish soap will get more oils off because of the rinse step which washes off the oils that are emulsified by the soap.
My advice:
If you scraped the bad coat off, come back with 150 grit and gloved hands and scuff it up, use a brush or vacuum to dust it off, do kokua’s tape pull trick, and proceed to taping off with gloved hands and glossing. Warm your resin in the microwave, 1-2 secs per ounce of resin (you want the resin between 100-120 degrees F), use 1cc AddF per ounce of RESIN, or 2cc per ounce of HARDENER, they are equivalent. Use a new brush.
If you didn’t scrape the bad coat off, you’ve got some sanding to do, but after that, same procedure.
Good luck, It is frustrating as hell sometimes, but when it flows out smooth (and stays that way), it is beautiful…
JSS
I’ve had fisheyes using the fast resin, but never with the slow resin. And I have not been particularly clean about my gloss prep.
BTW, Greg says don’t use DNA. The other Greg. Ha. I’m the other Greg. I meant Loehr.
Stay away from tack cloths!
sand, sweep/blow off dust, use gloves, DNA wipe with clean cloth…
no fisheyes
Hey NJ…
Laid down pinlines on 100 grit sanded finish. 3 coats of acrylic paint so it has a bump. Cleaned, wiped, dusted, as well as i could. Still have fisheyes but will most likely sand out.
The two things I’m having trouble with are.
running of gloss coat (epoxy) around rails. come back and there’s hardened drips. thick enough that starting with 400 grit won’t take out. I used just enough to get a nice even coat. Tried to use no excess. Guess I could use less?
unevenness in and around pinlines. the epoxy doesn’t settle evenly along bump. there’s little bumps and divots all along pinline.
So, I figure more epoxy will fix problem #2, but will add to problem #1.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
Rick
thanks
Will use them for b. wipe
Top coat went +/- ok where fish eye popped out i just forced the paint pencil hard onto deck, and that seems to help.
tonight bottom NO tack cloth, and extra presanding 80 grit, hopefully better result.
cheers
Here is what Great White North (Geoff) said in a recent post (permission granted to paste here):
"Here’s what I’ve done lately, with great success; calculate approximate glass weight.
Mix resin to 1.1 times the weight of the glass. Apply resin with a foam roller; not a squeegee. Same techniques apply though; when lapping, start in the middle of the board and work towards the end, pulling the lap towards the middle of the board so that the fabric stays tight.
Let it kick for about an hour - 1.5h (this is for RR, at around 70F, with the fast hardener). Seems that any more than 2h and I start to see fisheyeing and other weird stuff going on. I also use a different resin for cherrycoating; EX-74 from eti-usa; still an epoxy, but a casting epoxy with better flow characteristics (MAD viscous)
Go back and cherry coat using about 2/3 the amount of resin to fill the weave. Let that set up over night.
Sand back the area you plan on lapping to the following day.
Glass the other side as described above, with cherry coat and all.
Let it all set up for another full day.
Sand the whole board. Don’t go past 120 grit.
Then apply your gloss coat. You should be able to get away with almost half of the amount of resin you initially used to wet out the glass and still get good coverage. Make sure to wipe the entire lam down with Ethyl alcohol before applying any resin and once wiped, it’s glove only zone. I usually tape off a seam, then pull the tape once the resin has kicked, and tape right along the seam after just barely sanding the seam bead to insure good adhesion.
That’s about it; I usually leave the decks as is unless there’s been serious zitting and I start sanding the bottoms and rails at about 220; sometimes 320 if the gloss coat went down smooth, and go all the way through to 1500 wet. I like the sanded bottom…I’ve gone as far as the full Macguires treatment, but haven’t noticed any performance enhancement and honestly, epoxy just doesn’t get hard enough to polish like poly…but then again…that’s why it works so well as an adhesive.
Copy and paste whatever you like my friend.
Cheers,
Geoff
Landlocked Surfer, scientist shirking science, dog walker supreme,
maple leaf at home in a land of cedars and liberals "
Again, are you all using the fast hardner or slow? I’ve had zero fish eyes with slow and tons with fast.
Are you tapeing off the rail apex to get a drip edge? If you are, just run your brush around the rail a few times after getting the flats the way you want them. I’ll stand there for a few minutes to babysit the thing so I can (1) keep an eye out for any fisheyes and brush them out, and (2) keep hitting the rails, around and around, until there’s nothing dripping off the tape edge.
hey shwuz…
i wash my boards on the lawn with dish soap and then pick them up with gloves… let them dry then wipe them down with denatured… i don’t even really measue the ad F any more, just pour some in… then i pour a bit of strait xylone… micro for 25secs then go at it…
i sand up to 1000 and sometimes more with scotch bright pads… then polish then wax with a nice car wax… mucho work but they look great…
hey guys i wonder if your confusing fisheye with “zits” that is what i call all the bumps left by the ad F. they sand off and don’t effect the outcome they just screw with your mind…
good luck.