Can someone post a link or something? i want to learn how to glass wood to make it waterproof.
All you have to do is glass it. You can glass, wood, you can glass foam, you can glass rocks, you can glass your car.....they will all turn out waterproof.
Heck they even glass boats and airplanes!
So what is your specific question? Is it how to glass? Check the archives for real elaborate answers.....or in a nut shell: 1) lay cloth over wood, 2) pour resin or epoxy over glass. 3) squeegee resin into and off glass. 4) recoat glass with resin or epoxy. 5) sand smooth.
Hey summon123, resinhead is right - glassing is glassing. If you can pour resin onto cloth and squeegee the excess off, you've pretty much got it covered.
One thing you might want to consider when glassing wood is the porosity and oil content of the wood that you're glassing. In other words, brush a thin 'cheater' coat of resin on it first and let dry. Prep the surface (epoxy - scuff with 60-80grit sandpaper and wipe clean with acetone or denatured alcohol), then glass the wood. Using a cheater coat of resin will allow the air from the wood pores to escape without becoming trapped underneath your fiberglass layer. It also allows soluable oils to migrate to the surface, which you'll wipe off with acetone before glassing.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
Howzit camplus, You have it nailed. These days I do that the cheater coat so the heat from the kicking resin can't suck the oil to the glass and can actually delam the glass from the wood. In days of yore most redwood was old growth that had very little oil in the heart wood but these days most redwood is young growth and the oil is there, have had problems with haubush wood on the past also. Haubush is light weight like balsa and grows wild here in the islands. Aloha,Kokua
Kokua , is haubush commercially available? Is it native or balsa grown in the islands ( willi-willi ? ) I've had balsa that was grown in 4 different places in the world -- all different and all unique.
Howzit kayu, Haubush grows wild every where's , on the side of the road and is actually invasive. I have never seen it for sale commercially but we do have a guy who has used it for whole boards and rails in the past and I have used it for tailblocks. Aloha,Kokua
These guys’ advice is right on…
But I just gotta give a bit of a tip that might have been missed.
The glassing of the wood is not the issue - its fighting the pin-holes that matters.
Wood boards generally have some kind of air pockets inside them, whether it be chambered, HWS or compsand.
Any minute gaps in the wood joins will blow air if you glass on a rising temperature.
Pin holes are a nightmare to a new glasser on wood. Once you’ve done a few you forget about them, it becomes easy, but at the start they screw ya! It amazing how much water a missed pin hole can suck.
So, cheater coats squeegeed over the semi cured lam are your friend, glass on falling temperatures, and pay close attention when sanding the hotcoat, any pin holes will show up then! As white dots from being filled up with sanding dust.
To the professionals it’s elementary, to the beginner they can be a nightmare.
I set my resin cans out in the sun first thing in the morning. Set the wood board to be glassed out in the sun. go in the shop and get everything set up to glass. Only takes about 1/2 hour. Bring the wood board into the shop, role on sealer coat(cheater) About 2hr. later lay on the glass cloth and do the resin. No pin air ! No problem. In the lait afternoon flip board and glass other side.
People normally say that when you should use epoxy for glassing wood. This is a great link showing you how to glass.http://www.surfersteve.com/polystyrene.htm
I had a real ego problem with a laminator, usually this only happens with shapers ,lol, but I instructed him exactly how I wanted the process to go.
Sealer coat both sides, let sit for at least a day before going any farther, 2 days even better, on wood, lam resin will re-melt/soften/dissolve lam that has not had sufficient time to fully cure against the wood and some woods never really sets up underneath.
I come back and the entire lamination is wrinkled up like a prune because the underlayment has softened and come loose from the wood and now has gone off like a pile of shit.
I am pissed and ask him why he went ahead and did it his way, his reply was “Rennie told me to do it that way”, yes, Rennie is a wonderful craftsman, but he isn’t writing your check and in the days that Rennie was a laminator there was so much styrene and resin solids in a drum, you could glass a mud puddle and it would stick.
I never sealer coated with Dion, Selectron or PPG, but when Silmar came into the picture seal coat or go home, now this same know it all refuses to styrene his laps after die grindering them, dark bottom boards with silvery laps, great !!!
He learned to glass on the north shore and most likely was fired from every job
ROFL.
Classic post, JKP. I doubt it was funny when it happened, but the story is hilarious. And a valuable lesson/sage advice from the best in the biz with wood.
…hey Jim, yep the styrene the way to go
but I noticed that with some resinsthe reaction is not good
so, after you put the monomere you obtain a tacky hot coat
I see a lot of laminators thin out with styrene for the sealer coat, I personally prefer going undiluted with a small amount of cobalt, the cobalt takes it through the cure stage better.
Some boards need more than one sealer coat, I did a 10’6" old growth redwood chambered gun for Al Merrick, I sealed both sides 4 coats, sanding any zits in between, it would suck up undiluted resin like it was a 2000 year old sponge, but it did NOT get the smallest oil out or sparkle look anywhere.
Hurry up and fuck it up is my motto, you want it real bad, I can get it to you real bad
jimthegenius is a good story. If you don't get it exactly right with polyester resin it just isn't going to work. I used to build dinges in the early 1970s. They were plyglass useing polyester resin. Even when done right you might end up with glass falure down the road. Bonding to wood with polyester is not that good and is not that impact resistent. When you ding it the little shatter lines wick mosture and you get lamination failure. The best thing that ever happened to wood was when the Gougeon brothers teamed up with Dow to develope epoxy resin for use with wood. The bonding and impact resistance and strength is many times greater then polyester. With surfboards it was a problem because of the yellowing. Now days that is not true as there are UV resistent Epoxy. Polyester is going to die !! Boat builders switched a long time ago. Knowbody that knows anything would use polyester!! There are the die hards who have the polyester and wood wired that just arent going to change regardless of how much beter the epoxies are !!! You want to use polyester with foam fine . But for wood if your still useing polyester your nuts!!!! There are no valid arguments against useing epoxy on wood. Polyester resin on the other hand has no valid use on wood!!! I expect with in the next 10 years polyester resins are going to be gone.!!! I made the change over in 1985 and would never go back to useing polyester resin!!!
But, epoxy has it drawbacks when it comes to clarity such as glass on fins, I did 7 Quigg reproductions for the North Shore with glass on fins, I even had a stashed roll of Kettenberg Marine’s old style glass rope, in polyester it comes out water clear, but the glass on wood fins were extremely milky in the rope.
I read about the finish on fiberglass and there are different finishes for poly and epoxy, but to find a strand roving for fin ropes compatible with epoxy that comes out clear, sometimes you gotta make compromises. You just can’t do a built up bead on wood boards on the fins or around the tails for hard edges, maybe one paint brush thickness at a time until you get the thickness that you desire, how long would that tatke ?
The afore mention laminator suggested I put the fins on with poly, how long would they have stayed on for Garrett at 3rd reef pipe or Bonga at giant Sunset ?
I’ve had similar disappoinments with glass rope…
Now Instead of fin rope, I just unstrand some e or s glass…
Cut a 6 or 8" square and settle in and unstrand the motha’…
Takes a few minutes but it’s worth it when it wets out water clear…
The stuff used to hold fibreglass chop-strand and fibre rope together , melts when saturated with polyester. It won't melt with epoxy.
Some wood doesn’t take the resin well. I just foiled some red cedar fins for a couple boards and the poly glass did not stick to them at all. Even with a cheater coat. We switch to paulownia wood and have not had any issues with it. It think oily woods are no good. The oil comes out and ends up delaminating the glass.
Even woods that seems to be dry and oil free has their problems, Bill Bahne and I learned that some woods contain natural anti-oxidents, Duh, catalyst=oxidizer, anti-oxident, kills the reaction. But, solar activators start the chain reaction before this can happen.
The hydraulic press that is used at Fin Unlimited had the wood veneers faling off after cycling the sheets, now the wood is sealer coated with solar first and the failure rated had dropped to zero.
Also, this is why I add cobalt to sealing wood, I speeds the cure side of the reaction, not so much the gel time, I have glued blanks with polyester and had them fall apart when I took it from the clamps, the resin was cured against the foam and juicy wet along the wood, those teeth are always waiting to bite someones ass
Howzit Jim…do you rememebr the gig we did building resin tables? We never could get poly resin to bond properly on cypress because of the oils. Five years ago I embarked on a project to build 40 deep pour resin tables for a local eatery-bar. I used poly casting resin as the fill and finished off with epoxy ( for durability). I sanded them and glossed with two coats of epoxy using a heat gun to level it off…
Anyway…I use shellac all of the time in my antique furniture restoration shop and found it to be an ideal primer-sealer for any wood that is going to have resin applied. This works for epoxy and poly. Shellac is the ultimate barrier and is often called “mid coat barrier” in the auto shop world. I really like the stuff. Something for you to think about.
