so here is a sneak preview of the board i’m currently working on. I am using RR epoxy on a US blank. This is my first attempt at any sort of art work besides pinlines with posca. Turned out pretty cool i think. Reminds me of crop circles.
and now to my epoxy weirdness…
at first it looks like bits of foam dust somehow flew onto the coat, but really its like the epoxy started to do a little coagulation of sorts. It did this in a couple areas on my previous coat and sanded out fine, so i’m not to worried this go around either (not very many again)…but worth mentioning i thought because i’ve never really come across this in any posts.
Looks like too much Add-F in the sanding/hot coat. Used to get those parafin wax globs when I did sanding coats with the 2 cc ratio at temps over 90 degrees.
I’ve also wondered that as the Add-F is used over time the volatile nature of the Xylene makes for a progressively stronger mix of wax to xylene, especially if the cap wasn’t on tight all the time.
When I dropped the ratio to 1 cc the wax boogers went away. As you said they just look bad but really don’t cause any problems.
Hey Bizgravy…Start by contacting John Mellor… John is a great guy just up the coast from you. He’s been down this road before…Cold wet coastal weather and epoxy are not good. Looks like you forgot to shake and filter the add F. I’ve had the same problem …
When I glass a board with epoxy I start in the morning and I go all the way to hot coat. Temp needs to be over 70 degrees F.
Lam bottom , wait aprox 2 hours , flip , lam top , wait 2 hours , hot coat top , wait 2 hours , flip , hot coat bottom…now you can drink beer and let the thing cure for about a week. Lots of talk about post cure ,that’s up to you. After sanding everything with 100 grit a thin second hot coat will make your board clean and smooth…
How do you keep from having to sand/grind/surform the bottom laps before lamming the top? The old Greg Loehr drinking glass pushing the edge of the glass into the foam technique?
WOW…so yes, i think those “wax boogers” ARE from too much add F and it being not mixed up well. I had a small piece of paper in the room with some ratios written down and used that as i was in a hurry…but those were the WRONG ratios that i used on my earlier hot coat and vented about in the post “amateur hour with epoxy”…well it turns out it’s amateur WEEK. Anyway, i’ve since thrown away that little piece of paper from hell and ingrained in my memory the conversion needed for add f to amount of hardener by weight.
Anyway, i checked her out this morning and she’s hard as a rock.
I did talk to John Mellor about this and he gave me some good advice. I had a space heater that i was cranking in there but still couldn’t get the room up past 66. Oh well, it will have to do. The weather certainly isn’t what it was a month ago. I did heat the resin this time for 15 sec, so hopefully that helped a bit. Anyway, slowly but surely she’s coming along. I’m one hotcoat, fin installation, and post cure away from getting in the water…just in time for a swell it seems.
I’m still using add F but I’m not totally sold on it. Some people are telling me they don’t use it at all. The last board I did I used 2 cap fulls per 15oz. Simple mix , board came out fine.I think temp is the big thing. Summer in San Diego works well with Epoxy…
Thanks for that, stingray! I sometimes use a little pink ‘hotdog’ nap roller to pin the laps down instead of the string-pulling squeegee, but I still get a little ridge. Maybe I’ll put some more pressure on it next time…
So, do you use just the roller, or squeegee then roller to finish? I find the squeegee best for removing excess resin, something the roller can’t do so well…
I’m also trying to get away from AddF. I’ve got a piece of scrap foam I shaped and will seal and paint black before glassing, to see how much epoxy foam/froth my techniques create. I’m gonna try a few new things too, one of them might be a roller…hopefully I’ll get to it soon…
Laugh if you will…but I post cure in the mini van. I bought a digital thermometer made for a BBQ.
I put the boards & thermo in the car, and I put the digital read out on my desk, or clip it on my pocket if doing other stuff. I put the boards in the van in the am and let it sit in there as the temp rises. I never let it get above 120-125, and I let it cook all day or about 12 hrs. Perfect post cure. If it starts to get too hot, I roll down window or two. If it gets too cool I can start the car and run the heater at full blast. And you can get 3-5 boards in at one time. Remember to put some cardboard over the front window if your curing a longer board…the front of the car can get really hot, can you say delam.
This is all good if it’s sunny. If your in some god forsaken place that is always overcast, then wait for a sunny day.
It’s a very good use for a mini van…that and hauling dirt.
I do a normal lam with a squeege including the laps. Then I smooth out the overlaps with the roller. I bring resin out into the foam about 2 inches. Epoxy takes a long time to cure so you just work slow and babysit the thing. I’ve done 2 boards this way. No more sanding between steps. No solvent wipe downs. Board gets glassed all the way to hot coat in one day. I’m sure the pros do it different but I’m not a pro.
Follow the rules and RR works great. My problems with RR have been when I glassed in cold weather without a heater.
Since Greg is around, maybe he can confirm (without giving away any secrets) that Additive F does or does not contain wax. I’ve seen posts that imply it is a simple xylene/parafin mix but common sense tells me that you would not mix parafin in a lamination coat.
I doubt if Greg would recommend it as something that makes wetting out fabrics easier if it would affect the bond of subsequent layers.
Thanks for the info, stingray. Sounds almost exactly how I do it w/ the roller, except I didn’t babysit it to stick down the very edge of the glass. Will have to try it next time…hopefully in a few days.
I have no problems when using AddF, it does make everything easier. But I work in a garage that is connected to my house, and I cannot stand the smell of AddF (kinda makes the ‘epoxy has no VOCs’ claim conditionally false if it works best with AddF, which if I’m not mistaken, contains at least one VOC). You also state in your video that AddF clouds the resin. If I am going to glass something where I want the maximum clarity that your epoxy potentially offers, I don’t want to use AddF, and I want to learn how to go about doing without it as well as with it…as the situation dictates.
Those are the reasons for me trying to get away from it, not because it doesn’t work; because it does work very well indeed.
I am curious as to the answer to Mr Mellor’s question above, though…
