With the holidays coming and some time off work I’ve decided to try and finish up some of my overdue projects. One of them is a board I started about a year ago. I really want this board to look nice and I know that my glassing skills are basic at best. I was wondering if there was anyone on Oahu that could hold my hand/tutor/walk me through a good glass job. Ideally it would be nice to have someone with experience glassing wooden boards because the board I want to glass is a hollow wooden board. My original plan for glassing was a layer of 6 oz on top and a layer of 4 oz on the bottom using polyester resin. In the past I’ve done poor cutlaps with both polyester and epoxy, but I think my poly boards came out nicer. Hence why I want to use polyester.
If any one at all can help out it would be greatly appreciated. I can and will transport to wherever on island if needed and would be willing to compensate time with liquid aloha. Thanks in advance.
What kind of issues are you having? We glass on the weekends at my house in Kahaluu. I never glassed a HWS but did blasa and balsa skinned boards. If you are using UV PE it should be pretty fast. Normally if we start at 9 am, we should have the hot coat on by noon. My partner Rex is a master board builder. I am just a hobbyist.
Timing and technique are my biggest problems in my opinion. Not getting the resin spread out before it kicks, getting pin holes, dry spots, and bubbles. Just general rookie mistake type stuff. All stuff that I think could be avoided if I had some experienced eyes and maybe hands telling me when a mistake was being made. All the reading and video watching doesn’t make up for experience which I lack. All my past glass jobs have been usable, but not the works of art some guys here have.
My only issue with uv resin is I am required, by my wife, to do all glassing outside. I’ve semi successfully glassed fins and other small things in our carport with uv resin, but by the end its already kicking from ambient light. I have glassed boards with uv resin at night, but between the hassle of lights, bugs, and stray cats it always requires a lot of work afterwards. The wood also sucks a lot of resin overnight leaving dry spots in the lam. I would definitely be on the uv train if I had a dedicated place to do it during the day that wouldn’t cause it to kick while I’m putting it down or maybe a way to slow or delay the kick. Heck I even tried to build a uv light setup to glass at night and get it to kick with non-sunlight uv. All the lights I tried were the wrong wavelengths or not strong enough.
Also I’ve never tried free laps, but I also haven’t had any issues with cut laps. I never saw a reason to change. Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken deal.
You can UV lam your board at my place. Message me if you are interested. Always a good idea to put a coat of resin over wood before you glass. it seals the wood.
I am definitely interested and couldn’t be more thankful for the help, but it will probably have to wait. My holiday vacation time is only between Christmas and New Years, if you are free to do it then. If not I sometimes have weekends off so it will take more planning and will be after new years.
In the past I’ve always glassed bottom first with laps that wrap onto the deck to protect the artwork. Then glass the deck with laps passed where the rail tucks. The cedar I use for the rails dents easily. I also like as much water protection as can because the rails also have the most glue lines to seal, doubling up the glass seems like good insurance.
