This is my first time using RR, as a boat builder (15 years of 10’ ply dinghies to 220’ Aluminum Yachts and specialized in teens, 20’s and 30’s wooden Gold Cup race boats) I always used MAS or West System for epoxy needs. I have built some surfboards with West because I always have it laying around.
On my mini-simmons build I thought I would try RR since all the shapers like it. I order Kwick Kick gallon and half kit. I stored in a closet that sits at room temp in main house. I applied my bottom glass with a 2:1 mix in my heated work shop with little humidity. It never fully cured, it got hardish but still gummy. I waited 5 days and still the same. I just spent 8 hours removing the RR from my blank and still have another 4 hours removing before I am ready to try again.
My fault - I just dove into RR and did not do a test on scrap foam.
Have they (RR) had QC issues, did I just get unlucky with a bad gallon kit or maybe it is my fault? I am just so pissed right now, I knew I should have stayed with a more well known brand of Epoxy. Would like to know, haven’t had epoxy not kick for me in over 10+ years, ready to mix it all together and let it cure and throw away the ball of epoxy and lose $130.00 plus 12+ hours.
If it helps it “cured” with a light blue/green tint over my white EPS blank.
Mix a small batch and see if it does the same thing. Almost everytime this happens, it's a result of improper resin/hardener ratio. You may feel like you had it right, but you may have missed it a bit. I always mix by weight, using grams as it's easier to weigh out and figure ratio. 1 g resin for 0.45 g hardener. Regardless, if you can repeat the problem, call the folks at RR, see if they'll take care of it.
NEVER had anything like that happen, and have been using it for 20 years now in RR’s ever evolving formulations. There isn’t a better epoxy resin so proven as RESIN RESEARCH for surfboards, so its my belief somehow its operator error.
I have used RR before, and yes, i had the same issue once. I know without a doubt everything was mixed properly, could have just been a bad batch. GreenRoom Resin is what i have been using for about 5 yrs now. AWESOME stuff!! I have never tried West System. How is West System on EPS and PU foam. Does it cure clear?
West System can cure clear but it is expensive and less dynamic than a lot of other epoxies. I only have built using EPS blanks, but West makes the board more rigid in my opinon after surfing other Epoxy EPS boards (could be construction).
Never hear of GreenRoom, might have to give it a shot.
UPDATE_________SAMPLE TRY_________BELOW__________
I made a small sample on foam and after 4 hours it is behaving the same, I measured with two hyperdermic plungers. It is drying in one of my guest bedrooms (73 degrees).
I think this was a bad kit or it got FROZEN when shipped across the country to me. I am going to check on the sample tomorrow and if it is hard gummy then I am just going to move back to another epoxy and write this off to a bad kit.
I suppose it’s possible you got a bad batch, but not likely. Mix another batch and find out. But make sure you’re bucket is calibrated accurately. Or better yet, measure by weight… tare your scale with a dixie cup on it, then mix at 100/45 by weight. Sometimes smaller batches can be off by a high percentage, even though it looks like you nailed it by volume. Bigger batches have a higher margin of error.
Use some logic. If it were a bad batch of resin, there would be hundreds of other bad ''kits'' out there, with reports. They don't make the resin 1 1/2 gallons at a time.
Do they sell it to their distributors 1 1/2 gal. at a time ? Or do they sell in large quantities and let the distributor divvy it up?
I have a friend that was sent 3 jugs of RR resin instead of 1 hardener in the third bottle of a 3gal. kit.
He also got shorted some hardener on one shipment, so he had to buy extra.
I received a 3gal. shipment of RR KK that had 2 of the plastic screw on lids on the plastic jugs broken (at some point), luckily the box must have remained upright during tranist or I would have received a box full of goo…
I don’t think it’s wise to slag RR and their QC when some of these problems might be due to mis-handling by the middle man distributor…
FWIW… You’ve got more of a chance to come up short on hardener ( when trying to ring every drop out of a kit ) if you mix by volume… imho…
This is best I can answer, GL will probably see this soon and fill us in. We're just ''users'' like the rest of you lol.
The original home of RR, and still a major distribution point, is right down the street from my work. I see hundreds of gallon containers/kits prepped and ready to go out, whenever Sammy's not in the water and actually at work :-) I'm sure many of these are going to distributors, who then send them to end users. So when someone gets 3 gal of resin and no hardener it's a problem with the distributor's pack/ship process (unless it came direct from RR Florida or Arizona).
I'm also pretty sure there are ''drum customers'' who do their own repackaging, but I would defer to Greg on that one.
From Coil's point of view, there is no better surfboard resin, period.
I don’t think it’s operator error. You can be pretty off on the 2:1 and you’ll still get a good cure.
I remember seeing somewhere here someone had a similar problem, and it turned out the user got the wrong hardener. IE, he got regular RR hardener with Kwik Kik resin. My guess is it’s something like this. Your middleman bottled mis-matched resin and hardener. I would check with them and have them send you a new kit (free). Send back the remainder of what you’ve got if they ask.
every time I have had a problem with RR, it has been operator error on my part, got the correct amounts, phone call came in, I didn’t mix the 2 components together before ruining the lamination, poured out 2 activators and one resin, ruined the board, mixed it with a stirring stick and had unmixed components pour out on the board, now i use a 1" paint brush to do the mixing with, scraping the sides repeatedly to be sure ALL the mixture is mixed. Epoxies are idiot proof, if mixed right, even the rookiest of laminators can do a good job
A San Clemente board builder threatened physical harm because his boards turned orange, he thinned his epoxy with ACETONE, you know who you are !
Wiping down boards with chemicals before applying resin, no no no, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I learned the hard way, you can see from the teeth marks in my ass, I do not like doing it over
I don’t have your experience with epoxy but as a woodworker I’ve tried several brands. I’ve never had a problem with RR. I been building four boards with it these past few weeks, three sups and a long board, all with several layers of fabrics and bagged up. No issues except over nuking one batch. I bagged one last night, outside temp went to freezing. My shop was about 70 for the first few hours then dropped off at night to about 50. The resin went off fine. I’ve got another out there now and expect the same results. I usually use their slow resin because I’m slow and I mix by weight. The company I buy from pours their own gallons from drums but it would seem difficult to screw that up considering the color of the resin and the hardner. I woudn’t give up on it yet.
This happened to me. The problem was the wrong hardener was sent by the supplier. I had never used RR before and did not notice the color difference between the components.
This was a BITCH to try and get off and the glass job looked like crap. Board was strong and still in service 2 years later, just a little ugly.
This is what I was referring to. If I were a betting man, I’d say wrong hardner is the culprit. Contact the supplier for a replacement and let us know the result.
You know, we have a technical phone line 321-223-5276 and a technical email address gl10@aol.com to help people with issues like this. Generally speaking if it didn’t kick it was mixed incorrectly. If you mixed a second batch and it did kick, then that nails it for sure. Chemicals don’t lie. This can happen to anyone no matter how experienced you may be. I’ve done it myself.
I’m pretty sure I can do more to help you (or anyone else) with your problems if they come up than a forum. Please feel free to contact me anytime. Greg
