On clear lamination of 200g + 4oz clear over a tint lam. During wetout this white fiber showed up, could not wet it out. It’s in the 4oz layer. Seems like I may have pulled on fiber with squeegee. What is happening, could I fix it?
On tint lamination, which was 4oz glass directly onto pu blank everything looked great when I left it to gel. Then 8 hrs later I did the cutlap ( slow epoxy) turned the board back around and found all these little white fiber bits, looking like not wetted out. But it is. I suspect board flexed when I was cutting lap and I stressed the glass when it was not 100 % gelled. The pricks didn’t turn clear with clear lam over it. What do you think?
I’ve seen this a lot with epoxy over certain (usually darker) colors, seems like the nature of the beast, don’t think you did anything wrong. Don’t think you’re gonna “fix it” either, just is what it is. Doesn’t look bad to me. Probably have to glass with PE resin if you’re gonna glass over darker colors and don’t want to see any weave. I’m just a backyarder, maybe one of the professionals can offer some better advice. Got any pics of the full board?
The rail looks great, it’s only on bottom and in area that would flex when cutting lapp. Have to figure out how to support the blank during cutlap. These boards are down to 15mm thick.
Other thing is that slow epoxy might be Soaking into blank because of long cure time.
This board is a test of dark tint. Figured it would be difficult.
If you didn’t have the white spots when you first laminated, walked away, came back and found this, it’s possible you had dry spots in your tint lam that you didn’t see and the resin fell through leaving little clear “dry” spots. Doubtful you’d ever get them to wet out once the lamination has cured.
Looks like a shortboard, why two layers of 4 oz on bottom? Of course, you can do what you want, but on a PU blank, 8 oz is generally overkill.
This happened to me once when laminating in cold weather (50 degrees). The resin didn’t wet out correctly. I just added a layer of 2oz with the same tint, came out good and solid.
So you may be right, dry lam especially because of long cure.
But, orange board I let clear lam cure, then orange cure fully, then grinded off lapp. so it was fully cured. So was wondering if I flexed the glass in uncured state…
These are kiteboards. Shape is 1" thick max., down to 1/2" or less in spots. I’m putting 4 +7+ 4 on bottom! deck is 6+1.5mm wood+ 7+ 4. Boards under 3kg complete which us good for bombproof kiteboard. Kiteboards expected to last longer due to consumers experience with twin tips and they never seen a real surfboard…
Best bet at this point probably to tint your fill coat. I really doubt this had anything to do with flexing the glass. I’ve seen it too many times, too many places, always epoxy resin over dark color.
I appreciate your empirical experience, I’m alone on this up here. Good to know it’s systematic.
You think I might get this problem even if I clear glass over A dark spray painted blank? That’s my next approach. Picked up cans of Montana Gold spray.
During the weaving of the fabric they join threads. Sometimes these joins have sizing or something to bond the threads. These spots are pretty tight and sometimes hard, and don’t let any resin penetrate, unless you are using super low viscosity resin, even then…
Considering the rest of your laminate seems pretty good I don’t think it’s your work, just the rogue threads. I’ve seen plenty and was always self critical, so I think it’s not you, just the fabric.
Sometimes water damaged fabric will do the same, but opposite. The water washes the sizing off and then the resin basicly doesn’t stick to the threads leaving a lot of white visible.
In production, especially on dark colors, cut the offending thread out while laminating.
I’d go with a quicker kicked epoxy, the RR kwik kik, or Super sap.
Warm the resin prior to mixing (just the resin NOT the hardener). Will help with wetting out and will speed cure times. Warm room, warmed SuperSap and you can cut tack-free cure times drastically, like 70 - 80%.
