I’m going to laminate my first board ever this week, EPS and Epoxy, and I’ve read all the pros and cons of sealing / not sealing and using spackling vs epoxy with balloons etc. I’ve seen no mention of simply mixing up a paste with colloidal silica, smearing it all over the blank, and laminating onto that all in one curing session.
When laminating on boats with carbon fibre, especially when overhead laminating this epoxy wallpaper paste-like mix really helps the innitial sticking plus the bonding process and needless to say; will be absorbed into the foam much less than pure epoxy as it’s a paste just like what you’d seal your blank with otherwise. It also makes draping over edges super easy as …everything just sticks way way more than just with the resin alone and where a corner is too sharp you get less likelyhood of a bubble in the laminate as the void is taken up with this paste.
Colloidal is of course a nightmare to sand, and is brittle but then I shouldn’t need to sand it and it’ll be such a thin layer that it’s structurally insignificant and it’s bonding capabilities are basically awesome.
I am expecting a glaringly obvious flaw to be pointed out to me, but I can’t find it by myself so any thoughts are MASSIVELY appreciated.
Wet on wet is the bomb when you can do it. Wet on green is ok if you time it right. Sanding is terrible, and 3m 77 makes your tight radii /channels look ‘professional’
I’ve done tons of “mud and lam” work on boats. It is pretty much the only way to do laminates over D cell or any of the porous core materials to keep from absorbing too much resin. Otherwise they will keep sucking resin until the lam goes off and it can pull so much resin your laminate comes out dry. I use a 50/50 mix of bubs and cab (microballoons and cobosil).
Can’t see why it wouldn’t work well. If using Resin Research I’m not sure if you’d want to add F. You need it to bond with the foam and with the laminate on top. I don’t use F when doing glass on fins and get a good bond. Greg would be the guy to answer that one.
Awesome, thats really encouraging to hear from you all. Well I reckon that your posts have given me the confidence to move on forwards this this plan of action.Wet on wet like you say greg, it just sounds simpler to me. I could well be wrong and eat my words but hey!
I’m not sure what 3m 77 is though BWD? It sounds like something that I could do with whatever it is! Hope you wouldn’t mind explaining it to me in simpletonspeak? Cheers!
I’m hearing what your saying about 50 /50 microballoons and cabosil too Jonny, wondering whether to make it a cocktail then…I have bubbles not balloons (I forget the difference but remember somewhere there being one). If I thought I’b be sanding this then deffo cocktail, but i’m still on the fence. I’m seeing this stage as all about bonding and if Colloidal / Cabosil’s good for one thing …
I’m using some old SP Ampreg 22 that work were slinging out, years out of date and it works fine if just a bit slower that the website say it ought to (which probably makes life easier for me as I’m not superfast myself) but it does go hard. That must be a good sign. I won’t try adding F in regardless. I didn’t know that it affected bond? I do have some here at home with some Resin Research KwikKick so it’s handy to know that cheers!
Next post might either be commiserations or celebrations then, but I’ll be looking out for any more advice in the meantime,
I just scoped out 3m77 - scotch weld spray right? Never heard of using this making boards, but I know they use similar for positioning all of the glass before doing resin infusion systems aka resin transfer molding.
How does it fit in with your technique though? Anything that can make a board of mine look professional intrigues the sheer hell out of me!
Micro balloons is sometimes called bubs, bubbles, micro glass spheres. Cabosil is amorphous fused silica. Basically it is like a grain of fake sand that has been puffed like a rice krispy.
Got it. Balloons and bubbles same thing. I must been having a wee brain fart some time ago when I somehow registered them as 2 slightly different things. Cheers for that!
Colloidal is of course a nightmare to sand, and is brittle but then I shouldn't need to sand it and it'll be such a thin layer that it's structurally insignificant and it's bonding capabilities are basically awesome.
That's where I see a problem. Brittle and a nightmare to sand....Carry on,
I'm interested in your build....I hate nightmares......Ray......got any photos?
Hey cheers for all the constructive information all you guys! I’ve just got High density foam inserts bogged in at the fin positions, so not quite at the moment of truth yet, will put hdf in for leash plug tomorrow, and hope to glass this bad boy tuesday so will let you all know how it went! Cheers peeps! Appreciate the support too Rich, well sound of you. You may well be recieving a panicky phone call yet! Oli
Fair play Rich! Are you doing this on an industrial level or with homemade equipment? I’ve been trying to find cheap solutions for creating a vacuum and an oven for a while and any tips you have would be awesome! Maybe a new thread by itself or PM I guess.
I’ve been struggling getting stuff to go off in the garage, as the temp was too low, and this is the last thing thing I wanted to happen on the big day, so I shelved it for a while until the sun came out, or the missus went out (so I could take over the liviing room). As neither seemed to be happenning I explained to her last night that epoxy won’t smell for days unlike like last time (the time I fixed a snapped board with polyester in the house, it stank out clothes, bedding, everything)! SO it’s on for this weekend.
I am going to have to seal my blank seperately though, with a pot of fairly loose epoxy bubbles, and my tail firlmy between my legs (for thinking I could miss this stage out in the first place) for the following reason.
Has anyone else had the following problem; sanding back high density foam inserts for fins and leash plug, bogged in with epoxy to a super soft eps core----perfectly flat? Can it even be done? The hard bog leaves a small pronounced ‘high’ as when sandpaper even tickles this, it’s tearing a deeper section out of the foam either side (albeit less so with the HDF side). I’ve got it fairly good, but not good enough for a super flush finished surface I don’t believe.
Hence after all this, I’m now thinking of a filler coat at this stage to help to tweak any imperfections in the blank, AKA I’m sealing it.
