Surf Source Epoxy Gloss

General Discussion
21

Vern,

I laid down my first gloss with the SS2000 gloss epoxy resin today. In short, best gloss coat this garage hack has ever laid down. I know this doesn’t compare to DarthVader’s stuff, but for me, this was very good (it is only my 9th board).

Despite 60 degree temps, acrylic paint cut with future and india ink sealed with future on the hotcoat, it did not have one fisheye. It behaves MUCH differently than RR epoxy, though. It is very thick. I heated it some to thin it, but as soon as it hit the cold 60 deg board, it stopped flowing and I started to panic as I couldn’t move the stuff around with the brush! So I mixed up another small batch and added 3% DNA by volume to thin it, and it flowed like a champ. Cross-strokes and walkout had to be done much more slowly, and some bubbles were still introduced, but were eliminated by the heatgun I used after walkout.

Incredibly clear, no cloudiness, I was very pleased. It is so clear that every microbubble in my lam and hotcoat show through…

I kept checking on it every few minutes until I pulled tape, seeing if the other shoe would drop and the separations would ensue, but nothing, just a great flowed-out gloss.

Due to the thickness, I used more than I would have with RR, but the results were well worth it.

Unfortunately, the fumes are much more powerful than with RR, and the second I opened the hardener, I knew I needed my respirator, and I opened 1/2 of the garage. But I always use a respirator with RR, as I cannot stand the smell of AddF, so no big deal for me.

I think that at normal 75-80 deg temps, the DNA would probably not be necessary, just mild heating of the resin to get the viscosity down…

Time will tell if it is as UV stable as RR…

Hope this helps,

JSS

22

Max

sweet job!!!

dont even polish it

maybe a light buff

frikin nice!

23

Thanks Ken! But I am not counting any chickens yet…I still have to gloss the top…

The SS resin cures slower than RR. I thought I would be doing the top by now, but still no go, looks like tomorrow. And some uninvited guests showed up…

JSS


24

Max,

Sweet epoxy gloss. One of the few I’ve seen around here.

As an aside, very tasty metallic green and gold. Nice. That’s on the hotcoat?

25

Dayum, Max – that board looks the mutt’s nuts! Where the heck is the step-by-step, fully photo-documented build thread for me to bookmark forever? ;>)

Oh, and to bring this back on topic, what quantity of material did you use for that, and what are the board dims?

26

Hey leave those little guys alone untill it cures

then break their legs for messin wit da mans shit!

LOL

27

Hey Ryan,

Thanks, I hope I can do a repeat on the top. The classmate this is for like my bud Ross’ board so much that he wanted the same color scheme, but on a roundpin:

But I didn’t want to do exactly the same thing, so I looked at a few different paints and found almost the same colors, but the green I found would color shift with the angle of the light from more gold to more green:

It was a whopping $1.29 or so for a 2oz jar, I used 4 of them, thinned 1 part paint, 1 part future, 1 part distilled water. Sprayed through a paasche HS airbrush with #5 tip, 35 psi reading on the regulator with the trigger down. Lots of light, dry coats, then 2 wet coats so I wouldn’t have to seal the color with clear. The 2 colors are part of DecoArt

s Dazzling Metallics line, I found them at the Michael’s here in town (I spend way too much time there, people must think I do scrap-booking or something). They have a badass blue, green, and purple as well as others.

I sprayed on the sanded hotcoat. I sanded the hotcoat with 60, 100, 150 and 220 to get a good surface for the paint (rough surfaces show right through with dark paint, in fact, you can see places on the green where I was too aggressive with the 60 grit). The inking was done with a paint marker (my signature), and a Rapidograph pen with india ink, sealed with straight future, through the same airbrush with a #3 tip, 25 psi, same semi-dry coats follwoed by 2 wet coats progression. The inking seal coat was masked off to prevent any Future overspray which I thought could lead to fisheyes. To further fight contamination, I washed the board before gloss with Dawn and water, dried it with clean towels and got the lint from the towels off with a masking tape pull. Then I let it come back up to ambient temp for a few hours and glossed away…

JSS

All of this is stuff I learned from here on Sway’s or from people that post here. You generally have to fine tune your own way of doing things, but the basics are all here.


28

I see another fly

29

Hey etmo,

Believe it or not, I do have some photo documentation, because the students in my class are in 3 different campuses (Amarillo, Lubbock, and El Paso), so he couldn’t see his board going through the steps. So I sent him pics every now and then when I would get time to work on it. Unfortunately, the pics don’t show much as I took them after I completed the steps; some are on the LED sidelight thread, as I had to build the sidelights to finish shape the board.

If you’d like, I can post them up, but the build process is very standard eps/epoxy stuff, except for my weird kinks and the tedious, screwed up way I do rail bands…I also outline with a router, but there are others who do that and have talked about it here…

The board is a 9’8" roundpin with more full, lower, tucked rails, with a harder edge in the last foot or so of tail. It has a classic vee, transitioning from flat at almost the midpoint to 1/4" vee (1/8" each side) about 12" from the very tail, to a little more than a 1/4" vee an inch or two from the very tail. The way I measure it, 1 degree of vee 12" up from the very tail, and increasing smoothly out the back.

It is 2lb EPS, 1/4" ply stringer, sealed with spackle, and then painted white due to lots of shaping marks that were left on the blank (I pushed too hard/far in with the pencil when laying out the rail bands).

Glassing schedule was 6/4 bottom, 6/6/4 top. 4 oz was the top layer so there would be less weave to fill on the hotcoats…it works. I used RR epoxy for lam and hotcoat and ran out after that, so I decided I’d give this stuff a try. Due to the high viscosity and the panic, I ended up using about 25-28 oz of resin for the bottom gloss (18 at first then the panic batch was 7-10 oz, I can’t remember exactly, things were happening very quickly at the time, and I didn’t want to run short twice in a row, I did drip lots off the rails), I plan on using around 18-22 oz for the top, but thinning 2-3% with DNA to avoid the high viscosity problems I had with the bottom. If the board could be heated to about 75 degrees, I’d use a little less, like 15 oz for the top, but that’s pretty impossible right now, unless I can change the weather (maybe Destro can lend me the Weather Dominator)…but I think that a thick coat will help prevent sanding into the paint when wetsanding/polishing, especially on the rails to get rid of the tape apron line…

I realize these amounts are blasphemy to the real epoxy pros out there, but I do not want to have to do a screwed-up touch up to the paint job if I wetsand too much…I do not have the skill of a pro sander/polisher, so I spend a few more bucks on materials instead. What the pros can do amazes me…

JSS

30

Hey MM.

Fantastic job! I love the look of that mettalic paint. Have to find some.

Just to clarify, the green paint was not sealed with anything?

After sealing the india ink did you prep the surface at all, other than wash/rinse with dawn? (No sanding or scuffing with anything?) I want to try some paint jobs on done on the hotcoat as well. Some ideas that might not work as well on EPS foam, and it might be easier and quicker to do pinlines by spraying them on. (might be able to do some fancier stuff that way too… faded pins and such…)

That gloss looks nice… how do you keep your shop so dust free?? I just can’t get a gloss coat down without zits…

31

Hey Johan,

Thanks! By the way, your epoxy tints look pretty awesome, too. I do not have the courage to tackle one of those, not yet.

Painting on top of hotcoat makes the colors brighter, as epoxy is harder to get to go completely clear, due to it’s viscosity and other factors. I’m working on how to do this, though, as I would rather paint on foam and have the paint protected by more than just one layer…

The gold and green paint was sprayed lightly at first to prevent bleeding under the tape, with each light coat hit with the heat gun to speed things up. As soon as I couldn’t see any ‘wetness’ in the coat, I sprayed again. The last two coats are heavier, the droplets all fuse together almost giving a glossy finish, and while it is still a little wet before I hit it with the heat gun, I mist it with the airbrush further away for a more ‘flat’ look. Then the heatgun gets turned on. The thicker final coats make the finish less ‘dusty’ and it will stand up to scrubbing and washing when dry…

The wash/rinse with Dawn was done with a combo sponge/scrubbie deal, like the kind you use for washing dishes. The green scrubbie side roughs up the paint just a tiny bit (you can see it through the gloss if you get up close), but I figure that gives the paint something for the epoxy to hang onto. Oh, almost forgot, premix your Dawn and water beforehand, DO NOT pour the Dawn straight onto the board, you’ll see all the pour lines on the paint, they will never rinse clean. Ask me how I know…

I am not good with the airbrush, so for me it is opaque panels. Not good enough to do fades, but they would look awesome. Only drawback is the amount of time and materials spent masking for each color…but the results look good.

The shop is not dust free, I made the mistake of sanding this board in the closed garage, the garage and I looked like we had been in a pillow fight where the pillows were stuffed with cocaine…the pics are very low res, there are some zits, but the tape pull really cut down on them. The heat gun added some as well…no filter on the intake of that bitch…

JSS

PS - I had to let that paint dry over 48 hours before it was truly dry…that’s the beauty of Future; you know the paint is fully dry when you can’t smell the Future smell anymore…

32

really nice work!

i think you leaned a very important lesson.

“the extra time taken to make it right is time saved at the end fixing mistakes” thats basically the MO for the guys that do it for a living.

again great work man and that epoxy gloss blew my mind.

33

…the surf source pads look like the ferro pads that I use

so are they ferro or kind of imitation?

34

First - Nice Board, the gloss coat looks beautiful!.

Since ignorance can be cured, I’ll ask…

You mentioned “Future”, I’m not familiar with that.?

In the day, I used to use a Styrene Monomer to thin Polyester resin for my gloss coats, I see DNA mentioned (Denatured Alcohol?), is it used for similar purposes in Epoxy? Or are there other reasons.?

Thanks…

And Yes, please post more pics of your process.

35

Hey Darth,

Thanks for the props! But small pics can be deceiving, there are actually some small waves and zits on it, but still my best attempt yet. You are absolutely right on the getting things right the first time…fixing things later drains time, energy and interest from me…

Unfortunately, the high yesterday was 60 deg, and overnight low 40 deg, so the coat is still not hard enough for me to flip and mask another apron on it, maybe later tonight, we’ll see…

I do have a question for you: Do you think that epoxy swirls can ever be as good as the color separations you can get with poly? Is it just a matter of having the cajones (and cash) to use tons of resin? Because I thought I read that you use the cobalt to ‘freeze’ the colors in place. With epoxy, I think you may be able to do something similar. You may be able to just leave the mixed colors in their cups until it is almost gelled. Epoxy will get thinner and thinner and then start gelling haphazardly and sticking to itself right away, then it will start smoking if left in the cup (I watched it one time, stirring it every minute or so to see what it would do). I bet if you poured about a minute or two before the gel stage while it was still hot you could probably get some decent separations, but the resin would be very hot, and might melt the foam…I dunno, just an idea.

JSS

36

Future is the SC Johnson floor finish you can get at the grocery store in the USA, in other countries it goes by different names, check this link:

http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

Yes, DNA is denatured alcohol. I use it to thin epoxy, but other things can be used. The most popular (and very effective) thinner here on Swaylock’s is Resin Research’s Additive F. The reason I didn’t use AddF is because I have found it can leave gloss coats cloudy sometimes, and over darker colors (like the green) it looks awful. You can use many techniques to thin epoxy, check this link:

http://www.epoxyworks.com/14/ThinningEpoxy.html

Of the solvent thinners, I find DNA the least offensive to my nasal passages. Heat is of course the best way to thin epoxy, as it doesn’t affect the properties like solvent can.

As for the more pics, I’ll dig them up and post them later today or tomorrow…

JSS

37

This might be a little off topic in this thread, but as far a doing epoxy over dark colors goes, I found something that eliminated the problem I was having with seeing the silvery threads of the cloth on layers and laps done over any darker color. … I have managed to do lams without frothing of the epoxy and almost completely eliminate the little air pockets that you get sometimes when tucking laps, but was/am still getting the visible threads with the standard E-glass…

I found some glass at a local boat store… it turns out that it is a West System product called Episize glass. It is a flat weave glass that they sell in 4oz @ 50" wide or 6oz @ 60" wide… not the most practical widths for surfboards…

It wets out very well with epoxy, I was surprised just at the difference that you can see with the laps, how when you pull excess resin onto the laps it soaks in quickly and while you go around the board gravity just seems to pull it down smoothly leaving the laps very clear.

the one thing with it is that it has a blueish tint to it, so if you use it on a clear board you want to do a cutlap. …discovered that one cause the first board I tried it on I had run out of 6oz E-glass and put a layer on the top, free lapped onto the bottom… not so pretty looking. I have used it on one tint so far, and while the tint wasn’t so even (EPs and tints are SO hard to get even) the clear layer on top went down… well… clear! laps and all.

Sorry if that is too off topic! Just when Max mentioned epoxy over colors…

:slight_smile:

38

Hey johan,

Looks like I am glossing the top tomorrow, it finally cured enough not to leave a fingernail dent in it, but temps are now in the 50s, and I don’t want to chance it… 60-65 degree highs and 40 degree lows make for lots of cure time… I need an oven/hotbox…

How much does this episize glass set you back cashwise?

To clarify, on a clear/white board it looks blue, but over a tint it is clear or the blue is less noticeable?

I remember you trying to find a better fabric for epoxy wet-out, glad you found one…

Any other tips/tricks for eliminating froth on laps (other than the episize stuff) or any other things you have learned about getting very clear lams with epoxy?

Things I have learned for clear lams are work the resin as little as possible (think about eliminiating as many redundant squeegee passes as you can), keep your squeegee very clean (wipe off completely the excess resin after every pass), thin the resin (heat preferable) or use thinner resin (it exists), and never stretch the resin in order to try to use less…

JSS

39

Hi John,

Yeah, controlling the temps inside my glassing/glossing room is constant work for me too.

I paid 9.99$CDN per yard for the 6oz cloth 60" wide, so after I cut it in to 30" wide strips it’s about 5$ per yard. Keep in mind that it is still significantly cheaper for me to buy my regular E-glass from Fiberglass Supply than here in Canada…even with shipping charges…so you could probably get it cheaper. For regular use, I’ll probably try and find the Episize stuff in the US as well.

My lamming tricks are:

First off: yes, don’t try and stretch the resin, cause you will get froth. Either mix a little more in the batch or mix up more later. (I actually prefer to just use a little more to start with, a bit more goes on the floor but…meh.)

When I am moving the resin around after pouring out the bucket along the center of the board, I use the squeegee/spreader so it is almost flat and just lightly move/spread around the resin from center to edges letting it soak in.(snowplow like) I find that it is when the spreader gets closer to vertical that it will ‘scrape’ along the cloth and that creates froth. (maybe pulling air out of the cloth…)

And the same goes for pulling the excess resin out after. I use the spreader at a shallow angle (not quite as flat as when first moving it around) and gently as well as slowly pull the excess across the flats (perpendicular to stringer) and then down onto the laps, while holding the lap on top of my free hand so I can ‘sheet’ the resin on the lap.

It doesn’t sound too special, but I have been finding that if the pull is slow and at a shallow angle the resin doesn’t froth, and all I have to watch for is the ‘larger’ sized air bubbles that usually get worked out when tucking the laps. I have also found that during the summer months when the resin is setting up faster, that if I take too much time, and by the time I get to the ends (nose and tail) to tuck the laps and pull the extra out of them the resin is getting thicker, there is a greater likelyhood that it will froth a bit during the working of it. So, don’t take too long doing the board, but pull the excess slowly, and as always don’t over work the resin.

Hope that is of some help.

40

Ooopps, forgot to address the clarity/color question…

On the clear board that I did, which was 6oz E on the bottom and 4oz E plus the 6oz Episize on the top (ran out of 6oz E while doing the board), you can see the freelap on the bottom very clearly as a blueish tinged uneven lap. If I put the board beside a regular clear board and look at the decks, you can tell that there is a difference in color. The Episized board’s ‘white’ is just a touch bluer or ‘cooler’ looking than the E glassed board. I would imagine that the difference would be more if there were 2 layers of the episize on the top.

I could see how if you were doing a basically clear board with some dark painted areas on it, that you might not want to use this cloth as the white on the board would be slightly off. You would want to cutlap it also.

On the tinted board that I did (orange) I didn’t notice a color change with the clear layer. My plan is to use this cloth for the clear layer on dark tinted boards. So far I have found that I can live with the E glass on any other finish.