Hey guys. Im having a little trouble on a couple things while laminating. Heres whats going on…
After laminating the bottom and before doing the deck, I have the excess drip going on the sides. I use a block and sandpaper (80 grit) to take out the little bumps but no matter how much I sand, the bumps get reduced but never disappear. Im wondering if I should use a lower grit sandpaper like 40 grit?
To add on to the first problem, sometimes when I sand the laps, I sometimes go into the cloth making strands fly up. It looks aweful.
Another thing is, I feel like I am not using enough laminating resin when I put the cloth down. I use a quart of resin for the bottom and approx. a quart + 1/4 resin for the deck. I get the cloth wet enough to the point where the board is soaked all the way around, but I concentrate a lot of my time with trying to get the lap as wet as possible. Therefore I squeegy a lot of resin off to the sides. When the board cures, I feel like I did not saturate the cloth enough because the cloth weave is still visible. Im wondering if I did not saturate the cloth enough with resin? Is the cloth supposed to be visible on the laminating step?
As you can see I still have not mastered the art of fiberglassing! I really appreciate and help on this subject.
How do you guys cut the lap out for the nose. When I leave too much of a lap, it cannot be tucked under and too little of a lap will not stick to the sides. I also get a little hole that forms at the nose tip. Any help on that?
Hey guys. Im having a little trouble on a couple things while laminating. Heres whats going on..
1) After laminating the bottom and before doing the deck, I have the excess drip going on the sides. I use a block and sandpaper (80 grit) to take out the little bumps but no matter how much I sand, the bumps get reduced but never disappear. Im wondering if I should use a lower grit sandpaper like 40 grit?
2) To add on to the first problem, sometimes when I sand the laps, I sometimes go into the cloth making strands fly up. It looks aweful.
3) Another thing is, I feel like I am not using enough laminating resin when I put the cloth down. I use a quart of resin for the bottom and approx. a quart + 1/4 resin for the deck. I get the cloth wet enough to the point where the board is soaked all the way around, but I concentrate a lot of my time with trying to get the lap as wet as possible. Therefore I squeegy a lot of resin off to the sides. When the board cures, I feel like I did not saturate the cloth enough because the cloth weave is still visible. Im wondering if I did not saturate the cloth enough with resin? Is the cloth supposed to be visible on the laminating step?
As you can see I still have not mastered the art of fiberglassing! I really appreciate and help on this subject.
-Tommy Grimes
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1. Keep working, you're doing good.
2. Don't worry. The lam on the other side or the hot coat will tack that down [if I think you are talking about what I think you're talking about]. It sounds like maybe the cloth wasn't fully wetted out. Just throw down a little more lam resin on those spots and pull the excess out.
3. Depends on the size of your board and the amount of glass you are working. A 6'6" bottom with a single layer of 6oz, one qt is fine if you're experienced. I use 1.5 qts for the deck w/two layers of 6 oz cloth. Try to capture the excess in your bucket as you pull resin out and re apply to dry spots [that you can't see through too well]. The lam should be clear if no no opaque tint when fully wetted out. After a lam, the weave should be fully visable as a uniform roughish surface. That's a big problem with new glassers; they never pull enough resin out of the lam and leave puddles above and below the fiberglass. The hot coat [lam resin w/styrene] fills the weave and makes it flat for sanding / finishing.
I doubt any new glasser has dialed in the process perfectly. My first board is a brick; but I love it to death.
As someone who regularly screwed all laminating works for years and only recently began to perform them in a decent way, i’ll give you a piece of advice: do not hesitate to use much more resin than what’s really needed. Have a tarp or something on the floor so you don’t care about it dripping. Pour almost all on the board and drive it all over with the squeegee, WITHOUT PULLING HARD INTO THE CLOTH. When reaching the rails, do not hesitate to have A LOT of resin dripping along them. If you can save some in your bucket, that’s fine. Otherwise, never mind. Only when the whole cloth is wet, pull the excess with the squeegee then work the laps. If possible, watch a pro do it first. Better to waste some resin in the beginning and then progressively work towards using less and less than to use too few and screw everything. Also, learn to work FAST. Nothing better than having resin gel precisely when you just did the very last pass on the rail with the squeegee…
Howzit tg, Use UV resin and catch as much back into the pot as possible and then you can reuse it for the next step and the wate is not to bad, I hate to say it but you are using more resin than needed and that may be part of yor problem. You want to see the weave texture when done laminating but no air in between the weave.I think you need to get the Damascus Glassing video to tune up on your laminating skills. Stay away from Glassing 101 from Carver and get the Damascus with Cleanlines doing the glassing. Aloha,Kokua
After you do a lamination there should be an obvious, uniform texture in the surface. Like gunkie said, people new to glassing typically make the error of pooling the resin in the lam coat. That’s a waste of resin and not the optimal glass/resin ratio you want.
there's a big difference between a pro glasser who has done (tens of) thousands of lams and a back yard guy who has only done 5 or 50. like us. everyone who has posted has given good advice.
here's mine. don't cheap out on yourself. just because pro glasser can lam a side with a pint of resin, don't think that u have to. i would follow either Balsa or kokua's recommendations. however, u should have a light proof working space for the UV resin. i found out the hard way here in florida that ANY sunlight coming into a room will set off the UV resin.
yes, the weave should be showing after lamming. the sanding coat takes care of the fill.
about those bumps. after you've turned the rail laps, if you are getting drips that turn into bumps, u could take a 3" chip brush and brush them flat. if u are doing cutlaps then the bumps would just brush across the tape and paper u use to protect the side u are not glassing. if u are free lapping, just brush the drips across. then u might have the problem of strings of cloth hanging off or being pulled across the unglassed side. get out the scissors.
and about that nose and tail cut. i'm still working on that. i'm at the point now where i come back with a piece of scrap cloth and more resin (after both sides are lammed ond gone off, and stick that in the gap. the gap keeps getting smaller, so maybe by the end of the next 50 boards i'll get that perfect coverage. any advice on this from the pro's would be appreciated.
i took a couple of pics of the latest lam i just did, and if i can get the wife to help, i'll edit them on later.
A good laminator uses the feel of the squeegie to adjust the amount of resin left in its trail. He can feel the bubbles popping after the second, third, or even the forth pass. Also he can feel through the squeegie the change between dry spots and wet spots. Good laminators use their sense of feeling transfered through their hands, and then check with their eyes. Also important is the angle of attack, initially he spreads the resin more horizontally than vertically as a rule, but this can change too depending on the type of resin being used or the substrate being laminated. Its in the feeling. If you can hear, you will hear the air bubbles popping as the voids fill with resin. And if you can see you will see an improvement, if you laminate by feel.
A good laminator uses the feel of the squeegie to adjust the amount of resin left in its trail. He can feel the bubbles popping after the second, third, or even the forth pass. Also he can feel through the squeegie the change between dry spots and wet spots. Good laminators use their sense of feeling transfered through their hands, and then check with their eyes. Also important is the angle of attack, initially he spreads the resin more horizontally than vertically as a rule, but this can change too depending on the type of resin being used or the substrate being laminated. Its in the feeling. If you can hear, you will hear the air bubbles popping as the voids fill with resin. And if you can see you will see an improvement, if you laminate by feel.
I hate glassing and especially trying to wet the laps properly, can't get the resin to flow over the hanging cloth the way the pros do. On my last two boards I tried the UV resin and I also started using a 4" chip brush with approx 1/2" of the bristles trimmed off to wet and turn the laps. No more dry spots! Also I've learned to just "knock down" the bumps and stuff with a grinder or a stanley rasp rather than trying to sand them perfect. The hot coat levels things out and fills things in. Plus it's a whole lot easier and better (seems to me anyway) to add more resin to fill in a few rough spots than to sand through the cloth and weaken the lam. I also started using a large yellow bondo spreader vs. the heavy rubber squeegie and I am starting to get a better "feel" like ghettorat spoke of; changing the angle of the spreader to push, then spread, then pull out the resin. I guess if we don't glass a ton of boards we may never be able to develop the techniques of a pro but we might be able to produce something that passes as a decent glass job.
Pour the resin out...smear the resin around every where, ie wet out..... Let it saturate. Pull resin off and laminate it down. Move the resin from center to the rails of board. Rail resin will now drape over hanging laps and wet out.....follow waterfall of resin with bucket to catch excess resin. Water falling resin is like a tractor blade...don't go too fast. Slow and smooth is the way to completely saturate drape. Let it run off...turn laps and run excess resin on to foam underneath. Go back and turn rails again getting all the drips bubbles, etc....wear gloves and don't be afraid to use excess resin bucket and gloved hand to work any dry spots or especially the nose laps....put that big ol hand in the resin and slop the resin on the nose, use the hand to pull everything tight...there's no rules against using your hand.
Drips mean that you have way too much resin going on. When you pull the resin off the board and laminate the squeegee should sound like a light zipper moving over the fiberglass. Think of the fiberglass like a sponge. if you have too much resin in the sponge it will run out and puddle. If you wring the sponge out too much it will suck air and be too dry....Puddles vs pinholes... A fine line indeed.
You will get better, and do I say some day you will not have to worry about dry spots, preping lams, or having dripping stlagmites from you rails.....some day you will just move from laminating to hot coating with out dropping F Bombs...Yes indeed that day will come.
Howzit ghettorat, Backin the 70's I remember hearing about one major glassing factory hiring some women ( not done in those days since the business was a man's business) and they did some great work due to their sense of touch. Could not have said it any better than you did about how to do lamiating correctly and I have done thousands of boards in my time. Aloha,Kokua
Curtaining poly was no problem for me when I used poly back in the day. Just make sure there is enough resin sitting on the edge is probably the biggest one. Angle your squeegee outwards not inwards and then pull the squeegee towards you with part of the squeegee floating over the edge of the board. Piece of cake.
Pour the resin out…smear the resin around every where, ie wet out… Let it saturate.
Here is a point I think I may need to pay more attention to. Saturate…how long I ask. When I laminate I almost seem to rush the resin on the board, flood the cloth, drip the lap and then begin to pull the resin back out again. When I do color I quite often see small tiger striping where there is a double layer on the bottom. I also see this tiger stripping on places on the deck on occasion. This is often difficult to see until the board has had a hotcoat. I think there are many possible reasons for my problem:
I am not letting the resin soak/saturate long enough. How long is enough?
I need to staart doing a second clear flood over the entire color once I have done the intial color lamination (within minutes). I have tried this but find it can also lead to uneven coloring as even the clear flood can lighten the initial color of the lamination. Mental note… do the clear flood over the entire board or you will see where the extra clear flood has started and stopped.
I am pulling too much resin out/ squeegie is at the wrong angle/or squeegie is not soft enough.
I am still searching for that pro quality color lamination. My clears and yellows are coming along nicely.