I am going to glass the deck of my longboard with volan this evening. I do not feel comfortable doing 2 layers at once. Can I tape it, laminate one layer let it go off and then laminate the next layer, and then cut the lap, or do I have to tape it and cut it twice, once for each layer. Any help is appreciated.
why don’t you feel comfortable doing both layers? the process is the same whether you do 1 layer or 2…just mix up more resin. if you’re a little iffy on it, just kick it off a little slower…give you more time to work everything in just right.
Thomas, Don’t fear a double lay up with 8oz. I did it for the first time on my last board and it was just as easy as with 6oz. Just be sure to measure up a little more resin than usual to account for the thicker glass.
Seems to me you’d be complicating things and inviting problems by doing it in two separate operations. zFor one thing the first layer of glass will be sticky, causing potential headaches trying to adjust the second layer.
Lay the first layer down and cut it to hang slightly lower than midpoint on the rail.( Or slightly above the midpoint, which is my preference). Lay the second layer over the first and cut it so it laps all the way around to your tape on the other side. The second layer will hug the first, keeping it snug to the board. Doug
Thomas.
First of all you are using volan, so you have to factor into the equation that when doing two layers atonce you will need to fully wrap both layers around the rails and then cutlap both layers. Remember, Volan will leave a VERY visible edge where one layer overlaps the other’s edge. So if you glassed like S cloth and left the bottom edge miday down the rail then you will see the edge of the bottom layer. VERY SLOPPY.
Couple of ways you could go here. Most prevailing wisdom says that you should glass both at once. The reasons for this are that two layers glassed at once are stronger than glassing each layer seperately. But I am ot convinced of this. when a deck delams the top layer of foam gets ripped off with the glass. It would seem that two layers of glass would provide more structural rigidy with which to rip off more foam, thus causing a bigger delam. I have never really heard anything that truly convinces me that glassing both layers at once is stronger than doing eachlayer seperatley.
If you think about it, glassign the independently would allw the first layer to adhere to the foam, then the second layer would then adhere more to the first layer of glass than to the actual foam. the goal is to create as strong a “skin” as possible. It would seem that glassing independently would accomplish this. HOWEVER, like i mentioned above, it seems that the majority would argue for the former method. Perhaps for the only reason that that is the way it has always been done in the past?.. You figure itout.
Now, glassing two layers at once, as opposed to independently would require less resin, and less working time. Your only issue would be to make sure that you would feel comfrtable fully wrapping both layers of glass so as to avoid any edges in the volan. Though I admit, it does take skill to get the nose and tail sections wrapped nice and tight wehn using two layers.
One thing that could help tremendously is using UV cured resin. That would give you near unlimited working time.
Though, if you did each layer seperately, then you’d get double the practice and thus double the experience. I know that a lot of pro glassing houses will, when doing an old school deck pathc will lay that up and tim to cut lap and let it cure. then lay over the reset of the deck.
Don’t worry about the firt layer being sticky if you were to glass independently. after atime the stickiniess will disapate enought to let you flaow the new coth over it.
Hope that helps.
Drew
For a clean cutline, you should trim before the resin is rock hard. If you wait for the first layer to go off, then laminate layer #2 you will have a pretty hard lap to cut through. I would at least cut the lap on the first layer before you do the second. You could leave the tape in place and cut along the same line on the second layer.
Do you have any Silane finish glass? If so, you can do a deck layer with that and stagger the edge to the rail with the Volan for the full overlap - do them at the same time and not have to worry about the double nose overlaps, etc. The Silane glass will be invisible under the Volan. If you leave an edge of Volan, it will (as pointed out) be visible under the second layer.
I just sucked it up and glassed both layers at once and set it off real slow. It went great and I hot coated this morning and made the glass on fin. Tonight I am going to lay in a deck patch and the reinforcement under the fin. All with volan. I have silene glass too, but I want to do it with volan, as a test for myself. If I can make it look good with volan then silene will be easy right.