I’m a first time builder and did my first glass job. It looks ok, but at the lap lines I’ve got some strings from attaching it on the down side when glassing the top. What’s the best practice to remove those strings, and how far should I go with sanding the laps down. I probably will need to do some painting over the epoxy hot coat.
I attached some images that you can see how it looks like. I tried to not touch the glass of the bottom layer, but it’s not avoidable that it get’s a little sanding as well. Is this alright how I did so far? Should I sand more? On the third image I didn’t sand, that you can see the difference.
I’m aware of that this is a free lap. I don’t want to tint the resin or the hotcoat. I want to paint over the hotcoat. But next time I won’t paint the board and just make a pinline. So I want to practice now how I should do the sanding correctly… what do I have to take care of?
You have to sand it until the surface is uniform or nearly so - then put your next coat of resin on, and it should disappear. If it still shows, sand and repeat.
Ok. I always thought I shouldn’t touch it. Should i sand the whole blank or just the laps? And if I understand you correct I don’t need to see the cloth structure anymore at the laps, because I won’t after I sand ( as on the pics).
@grasshopper
No, I did not put the hotcoat yet. Shouldn’t I first sand the laps?
Haha… looks like. I have read many threads and everywhere it’s explained differently. And nowhere images. Thats why I put some. However, I will sand the laps evenly and hotcoat the baby.
I had to deal with those on board #2. I sanded them down a bit, but the hotcoat takes care of it pretty much, assuming they’re not huge. On board 3 I took care of those before the resin got hard, and tried to cut the cloth so that didn’t happen. Much better idea. Also, the strings might easily come off with a razor or something, but I don’t know if that’s entirely necessary.
I could remove some of the strings with a razor blade. But some others are so damn hard that I will destroy the cloth underneath. Next time I will pay more attention in clean cuts too.
I sometimes use a pair of metal scissors and cut those strings after saturating but before tucking the laps. If pigmented, the lap will still be ragged and they will still be visible unless you pigment the hotcoat or paint as you already mentioned.
Clean those scissors with acetone at the earliest opportunity.
Another trick to getting things level is to ‘baste’ the lap area with some laminating resin before the main hotcoat. It’s basically doing a double coat over the laps - that extra resin fills things in and makes it easier to sand it all flat.
I don’t have much experience at all but did the same as mr mellor (auto corrected to mr mellow) on my two boards and they came out good. No tint/pigment on mine though…
This might be too much for you but try out a diegrinder. Rad tools for just this. Sand down the bigger bumps and hotcoat right over them.
Or try getting a body file, like the ones for sanding down bondo on cars.
OR next time before you do a lam, cut the threads, or let em hang and cut them while they are dry. When the laps dry, use a seam roller/section of PVC pipe/pipe/tubular object to press the laps into the foam. The roller method was mentioned to me a while back by some guys on here, very very handy.
