My teachers were some of the very best on earth, whose level I have not nearly attained. As anyone who does this for a living can attest, at a certain point time is worth more than a little resin saved. My methods are, therefore production oriented. These are basically PE techniques somewhat adapted to epoxy resin. These adaptations are ongoing. Take what works, discard what doesn’t. Know a better way? Show it don’t tell it. I hope to both help others, and be helped by this thread, but others need to contribute for that to happen.
I hope every one of you who has had something to say about laminating here will contribute your own video so that each one of us can do our part to advance the art. I know there are quite a few of you who are extremely proficient, master level, at several, if not all facets of the trade. Why take it all to the grave? I hope every response to my video is accompanied by a video. There are two reasons for this:
1.Criticizing from the sidelines while being too cowardly to expose yourself to criticism lacks credibility. (there’s a dearth of credibility around here, methinks)
2.Video teaches much better than verbal descriptions. And if the purpose of this thread, this place is to share/and teach, rather than to merely bluff and posture without helping anyone, then video is the way to go. If not, then suffermag should just fold sways into their forums. Sometimes I think it’s secretly happened already.
Non contributing commenters will be mercilessly heckled re: their intelligence, breeding, sexual orientation, mothers’ morals, general ugliness, personal odor, fashion sense, dental hygine, level of personal fitness, and most of all LACK OF BALLS.
6.0 x 18 x 2 Rawson, 1.7PCF Marko, spackled, 4oz Hexcel E bottom. 280grams Aluzine - fast hardener
This is unedited footage shot by Sirwanks. I don’t know what the hell he did re: the music or the title of the video. He’s from the Caspian Sea, so maybe it translates better there.
Kind of hard to see, so here’s a play-by-play:
First I get logos and cloth down. No need to get everything really tight, cause you tension the cloth with the squeegee while laminating. Then I wet out the whole bottom, without letting any resin go off the rails. This takes practice with the squeegee to control the resin up to, but not over the rail. Then I pour almost all the remaining resin onto the board, leaving just a tiny amount in the bucket. The resin is split in half, making a fat bead down the edge of each rail. These are used to wet out the laps. I pull resin off the rail, using my hand to pull it along the hanging lap before it can drip onto the floor. Small amount of waste here, but major time savings. Pull from center towards nose adn tail so you don’t free too many strings. Once the whole thing is wetted out, pull all the excess resin out of the bottom out toward the edges, nose and tail of the board. Use a lot of pressure to button the cloth down tight against the blank and pull out any excess resin. This also leaves the bottom maybe a little too dry. That last little bit of resin left in the bucket now goes onto the bottom to backfill it. Turn the rails loosely once, skipping the nose and tail closures. Then go around the rails again, cleaning and tightening them. close the ends off this time, nice and tight. Take care of any fin system cleanup needed and look for voids, bubbles, etc, and you’re done.