Has anyone tried putting a little bit of wax in styrene in their laminating resin when fibreglassing repairs? Like say one up to 1%? I’m talking feathering patch edges with a sander. If you have, did your hot coat resin stick?
Hi Deanbo -
For many repairs I’ve added surfacing agent to resin on the initial lamination. Feather it out, maybe dab some styrene and add gloss resin after that. If there are several layers of cloth with rough edges to be sanded off anyway, it allows you to skip the hot coat step.
The wax in surfacing agent is likely to inhibit the bond on subsequent layers unless you sand it first.
never tried it myself
but I do the lam normaly
qwik sand around the edges
hot coat
then blend the whole patch to match the board
(maybe slightly lower so I got room for the gloss to be even with the surface)
throw on the gloss way outside the patch
blend that in and polish
If you use SA with the lam the hot coat will fisheye unless you sand it way down
I do it all the time. Just give it a good scuffing with 80 grit before you do your next step.
Cheers.
The less sanding you do around a repaired area the better is my opinion. The way I do it is: (1) Mask off the repair area (2) Prep sand to the inside tape border and grind out damage with a Dremel (2) Fill it (3) Sand the filler to shape (4) Lam out to the masked edges (5) Cut the cloth to the tape but don’t remove the tape (6) Hot coat immediately, pull off the tape (7) Fair in the edge working from inside of the repaired area outward using 180 or 220 grit on a random orbit (8) Use a clear spray or gloss resin to cover the weave showning on the blended edges.
With this method, you only sand the edge once. If you fair in the cloth first, you’re sanding twice.
Hey Pete! Howzit! Yeah I concurr. Many years of doing repairs has taught me thru trial and error that the best method is the one you desribed in your post. Contain the sanded area and and finish it off with a spray can of Krylon or similar Acrylic Lacquer.