greg- i just received the 3 gallon set of your resin & the additive F is on the way. being the anal retentive, beginning glasser, im obsessing about measurements, temps, spreaders etc… so- what buckets are you using?- ive checked the hardware stores around here and there is a variety, but all seem pretty inexact- is this ok? ive got the spreader and that ought to be an adventure in itself. as far as the process- mix 2:1, pour in additive f, mix some more, pour it all out on the stringer line, spread on the flats, wet the laps & pray. does this sound about right? are there any tricks for wetting the laps? and for anyone else- any tips on finishing an epoxy lam & hotcoat? ive checked the archives and there seems to be many ways to do this- anybody have a preference? thanks for helping, john
The best thing to do is toss that junk and and make a real polyester board. G Loehrs boards are the worst piles I have ever seen, so are Davos. I have fixed tons of these things over the past couple of years. You have to really know how to fixem too or they blow air like crazy. Broke noses, tails, smashed decks, you name it, cheap plastic stringers that have no strength what so ever etc, etc. They flex too much too, you do a bottom turn on em and the thing flexes so much they stop. They have no strength, you be better off surfing on a pile of dog crap. The only way to make an epoxy board worth having is to vaccume bag the thing when its lamed and to have a proper wood stringer, now thats a strong light board. There is a guy named Budda Bonafay that has seemed to finally get the strength right with these things, I think he is in Jacksonville Fla if you want to talk to him. You cant hand lam these boards like Greg and Davo and hope they are strong. I know several shops that have stopped carrying his boards because people buy them ride them for a month and they start tearing up, then they bring them back complaining, shops cant deal with these things since they arent making much on them anyway. G. L. is one of the biggest kooks in the industry, he thinks he invented epoxy systems for surfboards, but in reality he just buys the stuff in bulk and packages it as his own formula. What a moron. Read some of his past ramblings in ESM back issues, IDIOT.
Greg is one of the most respected on this design forum… and his product development has been highly praised for ease of use and riding and structural characteristics from everyone on this forum who has used it. I have not …yet… but am eager. Your message is sure to get some heated opposing feedback.
MKIA - I’m not a professional shaper or glasser, just another guy who builds his own boards, but I have done a few boards in poly and a few in epoxy. Compared with poly I’ve found the RR epoxy is easier to work with, stronger, lighter, and no odor. I have an epoxy stringerless 7’6" that does not flex like you are saying Greg’s boards with a plastic stringer do - with RR epoxy and 2 layers of 6oz on top it’s actually kinda stiff. The only drawback I’ve found with epoxy in general is that it costs more overall. You really sound like you have an axe to grind. Why? A lot of the problems you cite have never come up here before, and we have been over and over epoxy issues here. If Greg does buy his product from a big supplier and repackage, he’s at least found a quality epoxy that, it seems, works very well for surfboards. Eric J
MKIA- I AM a professional shaper and I have to say that was just about one of the lamest, meanest, most uncalled for posts that I have ever seen on this forum. Although I havn’t posted here much, I have read it for a long time, and I assure you that I have read every single one of Gregs posts, and think of him as a very intersting, innovative individual. He is well respected in the surfing commuity, and I know many people that I personally know, and respect that have had nothing but great things to say about him. You are an a**, and I really didn’t need that sh*t to wake up to this morning. A**hole! -Carl
wow mikia- you really seem to know your shit- its all starting to make sense now: the poly surfboard manufacturers are actually on the cutting edge with their 50yr old technology, and the boat builders, airplane designers and snowboard/ski companies are all falling behind- will they ever catch up??? up until your post i thought i was the biggest kook on this site. ive been surfing crappy east coast waves for only ten years and havent even touched an unshaped blank yet. all this and yet you have just earned the title of king moron. in fact, i think we should start a new section on this site- the worst of swaylocks- ill post a pic of my first board after you re-post that last message. get a f@#$ing life. im sure greg can defend himself, but he’ll have most of the people on this site behind him- even the poly guys. as far as him not inventing this shit- im not dumb- look at the dow website- im sure you can find products that are pretty similar to what he is selling, maybe even the additives- ive done the research. BUT, he is the man doing the experimenting, he is the man putting up the $$$ for the minimum orders, and he is the man with the contacts to tweak this stuff for SURFBOARD CONSTRUCTION. and i could be totally off base here- he may be doing the whole thing himself, in which case im even more impressed. in any event, i dont give a damn. i dont care if he is buying west system and sprinkling fairy dust in it- from what ive heard and experienced (i have two of his boards) the stuff works. and it works well. bottom line, to me- a new board builder, epoxy seems less toxic for the environment, cleaner in a shop, stronger, lighter, easier to work with and overall a better product. but i could be wrong, i am, after all, the second biggest kook on this site. stay fluid, john
Can you say “troll”…nice try…climb back into your hole… kuk…
JohnO, Here are some tips that we use. They’ve been posted here here before and are in the archieves, but digging them out would be a chore. I hope they are some help. If you have any other questions you can email me at . 1. Mix ratio must be adhered to. Deviation from the mix ratio will keep the resin from attaining a full cure. Also the material must be THOROUGHLY mixed. If not there can be soft spots. We use metered buckets (I’m sending you one which we get at the local hardware store) to assure proper mix. We use large paint stir sticks (like the ones hardware stores give you to stir paint). All our resins are 2 to 1 mix ratio by volume. The metered buckets work unreal, actually better than pumps and we laminate right out of those buckets. 2. Additive F. We use it in every batch we shoot, including laminates. It eliminates blush which is the biggest problem in building epoxy boards. It only takes 1cc per ounce of hardener in the mix. We put it in after pouring the resin and hardener into the bucket and then mix them all at once. It makes the resin a bit cloudy but clears out when the resin cures. 3. When laminating, the first thing to do is to pour all the resin out and spread it over the glass. You then wet the rails and tuck them. This gives the resin time to soak into the cloth on the flats. Polyester must be pushed through the cloth. Epoxy just soaks in and it does that in its own good time. It can’t and shouldn’t be forced. Additive F actually helps with this quite a bit. After it soaks in, squeegee out any air and remove any excess. We use plastic, “spreader,” type squeegees. We’ve found that they move epoxy better than rubber squeegees do. They take a couple boards to get wired but after the initial learning curve laminating is much easier. 4. We use VERY little resin. Below is an example of our use levels for different size boards. As there is no “gel” time, any resin left over can be used on the next board. If you run short you can easily mix up additional resin to finish with. Usually we just work out of one bucket and simply keep mixing more material as needed. It isn’t the same, “this bucket for this board,” as polyester. These are estimates for total mixed material. 6’ and under - 9 -12 oz. bottom 12-15oz. deck 7’ and under - 12 -15oz bottom 15-18 oz. deck 8’ and under - 18 - 21 oz bottom 21- 24 oz. deck 9’ and under - 24 - 27 oz bottom 27- 33 oz deck Hot coats run just a bit more than an ounce per foot. For instance a 6’ board would take about 7 oz. per side. Longboards, 9’, take about 12-15 oz. per side. If your glossing use a bit less than a hot coat. We use 3" disposable white bristle brushes for hot coating. We don’t clean them. We use them for one batch and pitch em. Not only do we feel that their not worth cleaning but we’ve also had problems in the past with contamination from cleaned brushes which manifested itself in bad hot coats. New brushes always make for clean hot coats. 5. Do not use acetone for clean up and never let contaminated acetone touch the skin. Any toxicity problems we’ve seen in the past always included contaminated acetone. Not only that but acetone doesn’t work that well with epoxy anyway. Leaves everything sticky. For your hands use disposable vinyl gloves. Clean gloves between boards with scrap fiberglass. I usually cut scrap and pile it neatly on the table so I have plenty ready. Clean your squeegee with scrap glass. Anytime the squeegee gets slick I just wipe it and my gloves down. When the gloves get funky, peel em off and put on a new pair. 10 cents a pair is cheaper than acetone. With so little resin being used very little goes anywhere except on the board so things tend to stay much cleaner. We don’t ever get more than a drop or two on us. If you do get some on you, use Go-Jo or Fast Orange or some other waterless cleaner with water to get it off. These clean epoxy more effectively and are much safer to use than acetone. I think that’s it. You shouldn’t have any problems but if you do my phone number is on the bottle.
As for MKIA, every point he makes concerns the core (blank). I’ve never suggested here one core over another accept in terms of specific applications. I’ve found advantages to EPS and to PVC stringers. I like how they ride. I don’t find them flexy, I find them lively. My point is here, EVERY core should be laminated with epoxy, not just EPS. It’s simply a better resin. Second, Buddah buys blanks and resin from us. He hand laminates like everyone else. I certainly won’t argue that he makes a nice board, he does. So does Davo. Third, we DO formulate and mix our resins. We could never have gotten where we’re at without. No “off the shelf” system can compete with a custom formulation. Isn’t that something we are finding out with product from China? I appreciate all the nice words but I also don’t mind being challenged.
Just FYI: I have a 7’ Loehr semi-hybrid round pin that was a gift from a friend of mine. It’s EPS with PVC stringer, and it’s one of the few really satisflying non-custom boards I have ever owned. It’s also easily the lightest seven footer I have ever had while proving as durable as any board of any type in my quiver. Note that I am about 220 lbs, strong, bony-footed, and completely destroy the deck on almost any board I’ve ever ridden, so that’s no small compliment. It actually feels very crisp under foot and although it obviously has a very different flex pattern than a PU/PE board, I don’t at all find it unpleasant. I have experimented for many years with epoxy boards and this is the first one I have ever really been impressed by. That goes for everything from the mid eighties (Fox tri–massive delamination, flex, and failure; Hank Warner quad- radical hot/gloss coat detachment and failure) to current (Boardworks fish, broken clean in half at midpoint under foot while new; Randy French fish still holding together due to little use, but very dead feeling flex pattern). It’s easily stronger and more lively than any of the popout epoxies and it feels at least as strong as any of my 6+6/6 oz warp-glassed PU/PE boards. PLUS, this board hasn’t yellowed and gotten mushy at all, one of my previous forewarnings of an early epoxy death. If my local shaper would switch, I’d have all my boards done the same way as the Loehr. There’s no magic out there, so I’m not saying the RR system is perfect, or even that it’s so much better mechanically that it blows PU/PE out of the water/market. I will say that it is a noticable incremental improvement over standard PU/PE, and I suspect that the bigger arguments for its use are health/safety or cleanup/waste oriented in nature. I think that advanced epoxy applications have been given a bad rap by recent association with popouts. In the end, products like RR’s may prove to be what saves low-volume handshaped production when the vise tightens on environmental, workplace, and other laws biting conventional PE resin systems. -church
Epoxy for board building… the best and worst things are strength and versatility. Polyester resin has to be used on polyurethane blanks. Polyester melts styrene blanks. Epoxy works on both types of blanks. Polyester makes weak glass laminate. So a polyurethane blank industry has developed over the last 50 years which supplies blanks specifically strengthened to make up for the weaker polyester laminates. Epoxy is stronger and lighter than polyester. Epoxy works with both urethane blanks and styrene blanks. Raw epoxy is amber, breaks down in sunlight, and has a slick candy surface. So Greg Loehr comes along and perfects a surfboard epoxy which eliminates all of epoxy’s drawbacks and preserves its strengths, and you start bitchin. Epoxy can make boards stronger, lighter and flexier than polyester. Have some epoxy builders made feather-light boards that are too weak? Yeah duh, so have polyester builders. Performance polyester board builders skimp on foam and glass to produce flexy lightweight sticks designed to break within 6 weeks. But I didn’t hear you bitchin about them. Board for board Greg’s epoxy can make surfboards stronger for the weight, or lighter for the strength than polyester. These facts threaten some people. So be it. If I was married to polyester resin right now, I’d be bitchin too.