Yoshio! Try Ken Kuroda at Manueverline in Osaka. That’s where Greg sent me… great results. I’ll PM you Ken’s email address.
cheers,
Brennan
Greg, If it’s OK with Mr. Paler we could take the Epoxy Construction Primer, clean it up, add a few appropriate pictures, and create a nice pdf document and add it to your site.
System 3 is a reasonable product, a bit slow in my estimation for surfboards, about like our slow hardener. They only have one hardener and one resin for surfboards while we have three hardeners and four resins for surf related craft. They also don’t have Additive F, which was a huge step forward in the use of epoxies on surfboards. Makes everything from laminating to hot coating to sanding go much smoother. And it was invented at RR. Additive F is xylene based with a number of solids melted into it. Didn’t really want to use xylene actually, but it holds the solids in solution best so…
As for our MSDS, I like to give people the absolute worst news in this regard so they’ll take the chemical seriously. In practice we have a twenty year track record that far exceeds any other system I know of for safety (maybe partly from our MSDS). Just ask the many former epoxy board builders at the gorge in Oregon about Systems 3. Then ask the many current long time users in FL about RR epoxies. Fact is our level of volatiles is far lower. And check right here on sways… I haven’t heard a complaint of this kind here from the many users on this site. In fact we even have a few former SB-115 users here that had to quit because of being sensitized that are now able to work again with RR epoxies. Right Mr J?
good to have your site going at last greg! i haven been on here for a bit … too much silly banter… hows things going on getting some RR over here in oz, after your boys (hank etc) were here sel and me got quite excited, but no news yet…please let us know whats going on, cheers dave
Greg- Any problems using your epoxy in sandwich construction between layers? Also, I’ve heard talk about putting a resin coat over epoxy to get a gloss. Any problems or thoughts?
Thanks o2
Greg
Had some dialogue in the past, used sp115 for a couple of boards, not too happy with the results (cosmetically), you currently have no distributor in Europe!! what is going on? I have a small boatbuilding shop and make a few boards a year, I would use your resin over any other due to the reduced VOC’s, (as well as the better useability) working with epoxy is a major part of my livelyhood and I certainly do not want to become sensitized!! I think there will be many others in my position. Some of the large composite builders I have worked for have major problems with losing skilled labour due to this, I am sure there will be a huge market fot RR epoxy in Europe. How do we get some to Europe?
Cheers
Mark
dave, i investigated your bamboo sandwich skin request on the made in thailand thread, sent you a PM but not sure if you read it.
Greg and retroman,
this may seem a bit silly but one of the reasons why i used restarted my surfboard building (after a layoff of many yrs ) with System 3’s SB-112 is coz they had a website with msds literature etc. and fiberglassupply.com also had a website with ordering info, so being a professional geek i tend to put perhaps unjustified trust in the net and its content.
However after using SB-112 for just 2 boards (one conventional one sandwich) i developed an allergy. Not real bad (rash on foreams) but the frightening thing was that a) even with respirator, vinyl gloves, full lenght sleeves i would still break out in rash b) anecdotal evidence suggests that it will only get worse and most users have to give up epoxy use c) this is tragic for someone like me who is only interested in sandwich building.
the finished result of SB-112 looks v similar to Resin Research - low blush, clear, UV- stabilized although the different consistency of the hardner gives some clue that they are not exactly the same thing.
i’ve since learned from SB-112’s online literature that their hardner is 80-100% aliphatic amine - a search on the net confirms the link between aliphatic amines and allergies.
Resin Research choose di-amine based hardners to minimize allergies. I’ve been corresponding with a student chemical engineer and he wasn’t able to tell me why di-amine would be safer, but from what he was saying the properties of the hardners can vary a lot with engineering and that di-amine had more bonding options.
thankfully i’ve since been able to build 4 sandwich boards with RR with not a hint of the allergy. The sandwich board detail is significant coz my method involves twice as many lams as conventionsal, so its as if i have lammed 8 boards worth of conventional, plus i have done a number of peel tests with RR too.
Although there is much anecdotal evidence that the RR stuff is safe (I am part of this evidence) my chemical engineer friend tells me that all epoxy hardners are potential sensetizers so use protection and caution.
as a summary I would say a) DO NOT use SB-112, its a known problem. b) there is NO place for acetone in epoxy construction, on its own its not good for you and actually inhibits curing and subsequent bonding of epoxy layers so is no good for your boards either.
with hindsight i now realise that RR comes with an instruction sheet known as the swaylock archives, but it’ll still be nice to see resinresearch.net provide content on the usage stuff as the swaylocks archive search engine can be a bit hit an miss.
o2nut regarding RR and sandwich building, i’ve had excellent results, i have 40+ resized pics of my procedure which i plan to post with a how-to thread shortly - i’ve been busy with everyday life so haven’t had the chance yet. Just a couple of hints - the strength of the sandwich has a lot to do with maintaining the liquid state (Ie not kicking) resin during the evacuation of air from the bag - so choose the right hardner speed for your procedure/ability. Also the vacuum pressure you choose during the initial cure/sticky phase is significant too.
Greg,
Good on you, RR site has all the nessecary info, except for a distributor in Australia!
Thanks MrJ for coming on here and setting the story straight. Again on the toxicity issue, you better beleive I was careful about our formulations. One of the main guys working with the stuff was ME! As for bagging and bonding, MrJ has it exactly right.