Sort of stumbled across this one while doing a butt-crack last night…
I’ve had problems getting my laps to adhere nicely to both the tight concave in the butt and around the points at the pins…always seems to lift a little bit and I get voids which either have to be back filled with a syringe and epoxy (not so good) or patched (better than the back fill, but still not very clean)…
So, while doing a deck lam, I left a bit of resin in the cup. When it got snotty (instead of just viscous), I dipped my glass patch in the cup; brought it up in front of the heat gun, then dipped again, rub with gloved finger; heat gun, dip, rub…until everything was saturated…then tranferred it to the area that needed the patch. Board was relatively cool, so as soon as the patch hit, the resin returned to it’s snotty state; no drooping, no sagging, no air bubbles, no voids, happy GNW.
Seems to work a charm; I’ll be using the technique again in the future; thought others might benefit. WOULDN’T try it with poly…but with epoxy it’s a miracle for the tight bits that always seem to fold up on me; think pointy nose/tail laps. Think I may even be using it for the tight rail corners on the next board…
Wow - I can see even doing mini-prepregs for ding repair. You’re laminating, you mix a little too much epoxy resin, you don’t want to waste it, and you have the big corners you cut off your glass…
Leave a piece of plastic film on a workbench. Wet out the extra glass with the extra resin. Let it cure. Cut it with tinsnips (works fine on 1-2 layers of epoxy-cured glass). Whenever you need a patch, grab a piece with tongs, slip on the fireplace gloves, grab the heat gun. Reactivate the resin, soften the patch, slap it on your sanded & filled ding…
Like that idea too Benny, but I think the real ticket is that if you catch it while the resin is still snotty; not hard or tack free, it means the chemical addition of amine to epoxy is still going on…so, if you put it on top or underneath a wet layer, you still get a good chemical bond, rather than just mechanical. Would work great for pre-pregs; just make sure you get them thin and that they go in the deep-freeze to dramatically slow the curing process, otherwise you get mechanical, but no chemical bond.
Yep, you’re right. Roll 'em up & freeze them before they completely cure. Better put the compressor back into my storage 'fridge in the garage. So much for the more powerful vac pump project…
