I have shaped my first SUP from EPS and have to decide if I outsource glassing to a guy who has the vacuum setup (and experience) or lay up traditional PU style.
If I outsource its easy but I dont learn anything and I pay someone to do my glassing.
I always prefer to have a go myself if its worth the effort for end result.
Glassing with e[oxy and a vacuum bag is something I have no experience with, or how much glass, resin or cloth I have to apply to each side.
My blank has no stringer. 9’0"x30"x4"
Glassing PU I have 20yrs exprience doing about 20 a year but I have been told epoxy is different devil to deal with.
If anyone has advice, links to another thread or other site please post on my thread.
Simple answer is no. Bagging a laminate is for difficult fabrics, and high strength. A SUP isn’t a high performance craft, needing the extra strength. Save the money and effort.
Hand lam. If you use epoxy you can do one side, then the other…take your time etc. Easy to do. Epoxy is just a bit temp sensitive, and mixing should be pretty accurate. With epoxy you move the epoxy around slowly so it won’t froth up…then you let it saturate the cloth (no forcing it in like poly)…it saturates slowly, so all you need to do is just get the cloth wet…let it sit, no need to pile it up…it will wet out…you can use a lot less epoxy than poly, because you are not tractor pulling it all over the place…just work it in small sections where you poured it out, pull it north, south, east , west etc. Once all that is accomplished then you pull off and laminate down. You have a lot of time to work with it…like 30 minutes usually, so there is no rush to avoid the hot kick. You will feel it starting to slightly thicken up at about 15 mins.
Go fairly slow and it won’t froth up and get cloudy…try a poly technique and it will look like water downed milk.
With an SUP I’d actually bag a wood veneer top and bottom, then hand laminate over that. I think that combination provides the best strength/weight benefits, particularly for high volume boards. If you want to learn how to vacuum bag, veneers are a pretty easy first step, too. I think bagging veneers is way easier to figure out than hand laminations.
