Just got my kit tonight. Will be doing an EPS tomorrow (Why bother with PU?) Matt is a class act. He is knowledgable, intelligent and has been very professional so far in my dealings with him. He has been very well prepared (through his dealings with Moonlight among others, I guess) to answer my glasser-centric questions and prepare me to glass some boards with his product. He anticipated most of my concerns and had the answers I wanted.
I will be touching base with Matt after finishing the first board, then posting my results here. Then I’ll be making more, I’d wager. Man, I love resins other than polyester. I love using a scale to mix resin. I love making better surfboards. Amen?
Early results are promising. The first board is done and I will surf it Monday, waves permitting. It’s for a friend, but he’s about my size and its a design and shaper that I rode for a few years, so I will learn lots from riding it.
While I’m aware of the C/W on Resin-X, I’m walking my own path with it. I’m still learning how to work with it, but I’m far ahead on the learning curve compared to my first epoxy board. Matt Campbell, who conceived and engineered the product, has been available daily for tips and brainstorming. Not sure yet about glass schedules, and real world performance/durability, but this stuff is amazing just taken on its properties. The resin is ready for market, it seems to me, and you can see that Matt understands the industry and had both surfers and glassers in mind when creating the product. It’s like Lokbox that way. I can’t wait to get a wave on this board and see what it’s like. Then I’ll make one for myself.
It’s as different from epoxy, as epoxy is from polyester. You’ve got to let the material dictate how you work with it, and the polyester paradigm definately has no relevance here. Flip times are very fast and your racks get freed up quickly. It’s not for slow laminators at this time. Around 5 minutes for the Fast, and about 10-12+ for the Slow. There are ways to buy more time, without adverse effects, according to Matt. Of course let me use enough resin, and I can turn a side in just over 3 minutes, but you wouldn’t want to waste any of this stuff at the going rate. Its cure rate is affected by humidity as well as temperature, volume and mix time/thoroughness. I now need to monitor humidity in my shop as well as the temperature. It sands easily enough, though I’m just doing 220 “team” style finishes for now. I’ll work on getting them pretty a little bit down the road.
I’d encourage anyone who is comfortable working outside the polyester box to try it for themself. I’d say, apart from the speed issues, it’s easier than epoxy to simply get a board glassed and sanded with good geometry, and definitely faster. I haven’t gotten pickier than that yet, but I will. I will report here after I have ridden the board. So much going on with this stuff. I have more questions that answers at this point, but I’m hard on the trail.
Matt has some panels he did for comparison purposes, hopefully he’ll put them up on the web for everyone to see.
You cover a test panel with your resin, and put it into some kind of weatherizing machine, which just abuses the heck out of the panels. Can’t remember the exact numbers, but something like a day in the weatherizer was 6 months or a year in the “real” world. I think Matt had left them in there for a day or three days – not sure there either.
The panels speak for themselves – the Resin Research panel looked really bad. Even a casual glance could see that this panel had been through the wars. The resin-X panel looked untouched to the casual glance. Compared to it’s control panel, it didn’t look any different at all. If it started angling it to the light, and scrutinizing it carefully, I might have seen a couple imperfections at most. It was really amazing how well it had held up.
According to Matt, it simply does not yellow. As he also makes a surfboard and other epoxies and knows that I’m quite familiar with some of the epoxies on the market, I tend to believe him. I’m sure that certain contaminants and mistakes COULD make it prone to yellowing, so at some point, someone will probably make a yellow board with it. Since I got my kit 4 days ago, and just finished the first board yesterday, I can’t really tell you firsthand, but I’ll make this thread my Portagee blog on all things Resin-X. Try wait, yeah?
I haven’t heard the explanation yet, but Matt said he isnt using solvents to thin Resin X anymore. Just heating both parts separately, then combining and mixing for 20 seconds. I’m going to try that on my next board and see how it goes.
Matt has some panels he did for comparison purposes, hopefully he’ll put them up on the web for everyone to see.
You cover a test panel with your resin, and put it into some kind of weatherizing machine, which just abuses the heck out of the panels. Can’t remember the exact numbers, but something like a day in the weatherizer was 6 months or a year in the “real” world. I think Matt had left them in there for a day or three days – not sure there either.
The panels speak for themselves – the Resin Research panel looked really bad. Even a casual glance could see that this panel had been through the wars. …
PU foam is not UV stable. If you leave a blank out in the sun you will find this out.
Any resin to be used over PU foam must therefore block UV.
Resin Research does not block UV out of the bottle. If you do a layup with it over PU foam and leave it in the sun, it will look horrible. If you do this as a test of the resin you are ignorant. I say this because Resin Research also offers UV blockers to be added to their resins, and as inexperienced as I am at glassing, they somehow still found their way on my board, and it weathered just fine - comparable or better than polyester resin boards.
I haven’t heard the explanation yet, but Matt said he isnt using solvents to thin Resin X anymore. Just heating both parts separately, then combining and mixing for 20 seconds. I’m going to try that on my next board and see how it goes.
Jon
It depends on the environment. This stuff is so climatically sensitive that different approaches are needed to work with it. I’m talking about using the Fast. Heating would probably be fine for the Slow, but since I’d rather not laminate with the Fast, I’ve got to use it for something. I’ll probably just order Slow next time. He told me to try solvents in an e-mail this morning. Then again, it’s 85F and 85% humidity where I’m using the stuff. It’s the humidity more than the temperature, though.
I tried using just heat with the fast formula today to glass on some fins. It shortened the working time noticeably. I still had plenty of time, but I would say it was no longer workable after about 7 minutes. Using styrene or xylene seems to lengthen the working time by quite a bit. I havent tried it at such high temps though, hottest its been when I was using it has been 70 with 50 to 80% humidity depending on the day. I usually use the slow for laminating and the fast for the hot coats.
bammbamm – what do you think about laminating with the slow, and hotcoating with the fast?
That’s what I’ve been doing, but here in Hawaii, the fast is too quick to hotcoat without fiddling. I’m commencing to fiddle. Once I’m out of Fast, I’ll probably just stick with the Slow. Why use any more solvents than absolutely necessary?
Blakestah is correct. RR without UV absorber will look bad over urethane foam in a short time. I have the same tests. RR CE resin contains absorber and the results on urethane are completely different. On EPS absorber is not nessesary.
Keep in mind the TLV Greg listed is for GAS or VAPOR exposure. If we were painting cars with urethane or blowing blanks it would be a valid point.
My biggest safety concern with the Resin X, just like RR Epoxy, is skin sensitization. Dont play around with the stuff without gloves. I personally wouldn’t be too worried about free isocyanates being released from Resin X. The isocyanates in Resin X are dimers or longer polymers and are not gasses. In addition, the isocyanates act as a catalyst during the process, so almost all of the isocyanates react instantaneously to form the resin. The shorter the isocyanate polymer, the more quickly it will react. As a result, there are no free isocyanates in the resin after it is applied that could volatilize during the curing process. Thus, no adverse health effects are expected following the proper application of the resin. However, during the curing process, any solvent you added in the resin will continue to evaporate (gas off) as the resin hardens over the next 24 hours or so. The amount of solvent that evaporates decreases over time so that under “standard conditions,” i.e. a temperature of 68 degrees F and a relative humidity of 50%, you should be able to safely enter the work area after 2 to 4 hours without any protection. This time will depend on the amount of air “turn over,” i.e., the ventilation of the area. The higher the turn over the faster you can get back in there without a respirator.
You definitely don’t want to be spraying or otherwise atomizing the resin without properly using a SCBA or other approved air supplied respirator. There isn’t a cartridge respirator available that can remove the isocyanates found in urethanes. Also keep in mind sanding any urethane before its fully reacted is asking for problems if you dont use proper protection.
Keep in mind the TLV Greg listed is for GAS or VAPOR exposure. If we were painting cars with urethane or blowing blanks it would be a valid point.
My biggest safety concern with the Resin X, just like RR Epoxy, is skin sensitization. Dont play around with the stuff without gloves. I personally wouldn’t be too worried about free isocyanates being released from Resin X. The isocyanates in Resin X are dimmers or longer polymers and are not gasses. In addition, the isocyanates act as a catalyst during the process, so almost all of the isocyanates react instantaneously to form the resin. The shorter the isocyanate polymer, the more quickly it will react. As a result, there are no free isocyanates in the resin after it is applied that could volatilize during the curing process. Thus, no adverse health effects are expected following the proper application of the resin. However, during the curing process, any solvent you added in the resin will continue to evaporate (gas off) as the resin hardens over the next 24 hours or so. The amount of solvent that evaporates decreases over time so that under “standard conditions,” i.e. a temperature of 68 degrees F and a relative humidity of 50%, you should be able to safely enter the work area after 2 to 4 hours without any protection. This time will depend on the amount of air “turn over,” i.e., the ventilation of the area. The higher the turn over the faster you can get back in there without a respirator.
You definitely don’t want to be spraying or otherwise atomizing the resin without properly using a SCBA or other approved air supplied respirator. There isn’t a cartridge respirator available that can remove the isocyanates found in urethanes. Also keep in mind sanding any urethane before its fully reacted is asking for problems if you dont use proper protection.