Hi All- Can epoxy junkies tell me how to get epoxy resin safely out of screwholes without damaging the threads? Thanks for the help.Cheers and Aloha
First: nice shape in your avatar. I like. Looks fast.
Second: the obvious wise-aleck answer is not to get it in there in the first place by filling the screwholes with wax or something.
Okay, now that those bases are covered, I have to admit getting a bunch of epoxy in the screwholes on my last board: a quad with proboxes that I decided to glass over. In my case, one thing in my favor was that I left the set screws in but had them screwed down pretty low. I used a fine, angled scribing tool (looks like a metal dentist’s pick) to slowly pick away at the resin following the groove of the thread. With the majority of the epoxy picked away, I was able to back the set screws out and push out the remaining bits of epoxy along with it.
Get the proper(fittting) steel tap that is the perfect match to the set screw. Drill out epoxy, and re-tap the threads. And if you need to, you can go up one size and re-fit.
Left handed drill bit of the proper size will likely back it out. Dont get it too hot or you will be retapping that hole for a larger grub screw.
Dental picks, good lighting, and magnification and patience can allow one to eventually access the flats and back the screw out.
Presetting the plugs/boxes, I like to remove grub screws, cut a Q tip in half strip the cotton head of some bulk, stick it in a drill chuck, dip it in car wax and run it through the threaded holes several times before glassing. that way if resin gets in past my tape the resin will not bond well to the threads. Also it makes turning those grubs screws so much more buttery thereafter. I also car wax the grub screws themselves before reinserting only as deep as they need to be. I also wax the inside of the finboxes incase the tape fails.
But the wax itself can insure tape failure as it will not bond well to a waxed surface. So precision application of wax, or precise removal of its overflow is required.
All this is time consuming, and does not lend itself to production, but how much time and labor will be wasted when resin gets past the tape into that where it does not belong?
Couldn’t you just jam some surf wax in there pre-glass?
yea,and amen
wax in the screwhole
six bits
(homage to shave anna hair cut)
better than 2 cents worth of you shouda.
but thinking micro easy out
excpt for epoxy sticks
aw shux.
polyesther’s bond to finbox
being low peercentile could be a backhand
advantage.sorry this happened to you .
get tiny tools and go slow in small increments
be patient and it will come out.
or … take out whole box and do it over.
…ambrose…
maybe just leave it untied
on the roof of your car
during h-cane winds
outside overnight.