hello, i have been looking in the archives for a while now but cant find any thing that really helps me, so maybe you guys could give me a hand, so i just recently started glassing my board i finished shaping about 3 days ago, so i glassed the bottom with about 400g of epoxy (266g of epoxy and 134g of hardener) and it went smoothly but it seems like it is taking for ever to dry, so i decided to keep going and finish laminating the top the next day, but the bottom was still very tacky. and now the bottom is getting harder but not even close to what i would expect, also i decided to hot coat the bottom because im running low on time for glassing space(moving places), im going to wait till tommarow to hot coat the top then let cure for 5 days could this work or did i screw up bad?
also its about 80+ low humidity in the glassing room
400 grams of resin divided by 3.22=124.2 grams of hardener and 275.7 grams of epoxy.Sounds like you were close enough for your ratios,maybe you didn’t mix it well enough.I’ve had RR kick slow from using too much additive F…
You did not stir the epoxy well enough. when I glass I stir for at least 1-2 minutes, scraping the sides. Also I always put the hardener in the container first, just to make sure that the hardener will mix with the resin. As far as this board, there are people on here who have previously had this problem, im sure someone more experienced than me will be able to help you!
okay thanks! that would be the problem i stured the epoxy for maybe 30 seconds max, but i did put the hardener in first! so will it every dry/cure or is it dead?
You might be in trouble richardk… You could wait a bit longer, but I don’t know. I have had the same exact thing happen - for the same exact reason! I ended up re hot coating everything and then lightly sanding so as to not cut down to the sticky. I am in no way an expert though, wait for more/maybe better advice
thanks, stuckinoregon, the hot coat on the bottom is curing nicely so i think im going to sand lightly and repeat with the top and hopfully i can salvage it because the board itself came out great! haha
So I climb back on my rant box................. Why do people have such problems with epoxy? The sutf takes like 45 minutes to even get to the consistency of honey. You have all day to work with it. Slow down...Do it right and save all sorts of grief. Heck it doesn't even kick off...It just gets thicker, and thicker, and thicker..
Take your time and stir the epoxy well...DON'T WHIP IT INTO A FROTH, just stir it. just fold it in, use a big tonge depressor. Don't use a screw driver...or a pencil. Stiring it well means:
1) stir 30 sec -1 minute minutes going left
2) Stir 30 sec - 1 minute minutes going right
3) Stir the stuff off the bottom and crease in cup 30 sec minute
4) Stir the stuff off the edges....run the edges 30 sec
After all that pour it all out on the board and work it around.............You'll have at 30-45 minutes to work the lam. If you can't get a lam right in 20 mins, you might want to take up another hobby, something that doesn't use power tools and tape measures.
RR will kick off even if you screw up the 2 to 1 by a lot. I've screwed up as much as adding colorant, west System 404 powder, and Additive F...........Then adding the hardner, so were talking about being off by as much as 20% or so. Hell, it still kicked off hard as a rock....But it turned yellow in a few months.
Oh one more thing...Richard, this isn't direct exactly at you. It's just that this problem comes up about every third day here in Swaylocksland.
I think it's a shame that guys spend all this time on materials and labor just to mess it up by not stiring well enough.
Let the board sit...it will kick off. Worst case is that the epoxy will get hard but it will presure ding easily..slightly soft, and turn yellow before it's time.
Adding epoxy to the top of it isn't going to help the problem. Adding epoxy to the top is just adding weight. Adding epoxy is just putting a crunchy outter shell to a soft chewy inside. Sort of like a candy.....It will still dent.
hey, thanks for the replies! it’s great to hear that my board is salvagable, so it looks like my problem is mixing and im going to make an hot box for curing my tacky board and as of now it has been hardening up thanks god haha, its been about 4 days now and the bottom’s hot coat is almost hard and the top is still a little tacky but ready for a properly mixed hot coat:)
Resinhead is right on target. Most people don’t mix the resin well enough. It is not like polyester resin at all. It has to be mixed so well that all the molecules are evenly diffused. Ratios are important. No one is good enough to estimate. Take time to mix at least a couple hundred stirs with a nice sized stick.
thanks guys for all the input, so recently i took a heat gun and softened up all the unmixed resin i could from the hot coat and gloss coat and peeled all of it off and started again with a batch of epoxy that was mixed for more than 10 seconds and it hardened within 50- 120 min but still a little tacky but in general alot better than the first coats! also since the inside will be soft and prone to pressure dings because i could’nt pull off the fiber glass cloth for financial/tech problems, i will most likely do one more hard coat to firm it up alittle better, by the way im not to worried about weight, first off all it was done with 6oz bottom and 4 oz top because at first i had the impression that this was going to be a light high performance board. but now im looking at it as a learning board so when i shape my next one it will come out a lot better!
Weigh the mixture, use paint sticks for stirring, stir it thoroughly, work at +70F = no problems. There’s been an uncured or sticky epoxy post each week for the past 3-4 years. Somebody put this in the archives to refer future post to.