Hello all I can’t seem to find the answer I’m looking for so I thought I’d ask the experts…. I’m working with RR epoxy trying to glass some wooden fins I’ve made and want that nice clear halo but I’m having problems with the tiny bubbles. I’ve tried heating the epoxy, mixing slowly, and even straining it through a mesh but can’t seem to get rid of the bubbles. Any suggestions from the experts?
Did you seal the wood with RR before you glassed them???
Got any pics to see?
higaman,
I’m no expert, but here goes…
I’m going to start on a set of fins in a week or two, if you don’t find out a solution before that, I’ll let you know how I fare. The bubbles are usually caused by the viscosity of the resin, matched with ‘overworking’ or even just ‘working’ it. Heating is the best way to ‘thin’ the resin without causing changes in the physical properties.
My best 2 solutions since you have already tried heating (how hot?), mixing discipline, and straining, is to:
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hit the fins with a heat gun to get the bubbles out. The heat gun works wonders for me on hot and gloss coats, pops bubbles I didn’t even know were there in many cases. Be careful with the heat gun, practice on something with resin on it (froth it up to see the effect more) so you can see that too much of the heat gun is a bad thing. Just right, and bubbles pop, too much and a cratery waviness comes over the surface, and it stays that way, almost ‘flash curing’ the resin on the surface.
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Another thing you could try is heating the fins, maybe the glass too (hit 'em with a hair dryer for a little bit, or out in the sun), because the hot resin spread over a colder fin/glass makes the resin colder faster, making it more viscous, and the bubbles happen again. You will have to work faster if you do this, as hotter resin ‘gels’ faster.
How are you glassing the fins, like Bert’s thread, or another way? Also, can you show us pics of what you are running into?
JSS
Wasn’t that a big hit by Don Ho?
I was just about to post a topic on heating the epoxy for hot and gloss coats. I’ve had the same problem with trapped air bubbles causing zits… pain to sand out. Well, this was more of an accident that I came across, but heard about it from a shaping buddy. Apparently people use torches or in Hicksy’s case a heat gun. Since I don’t have either, and figure most people don’t either, what’s to use?? Tonight I used a hair dryer to speed up the curing of a patch panel on the tail of a fish,… also to help cure the zig pen lines. Accidentally it made the hot coat patch cure very flat, no bubbles! I’ll try it on the gloss coat tomorrow and let everyone know how it goes. Hopefully I’m not the last one in the loop with blasting the epoxy to get it to settle down. Seems to work like a champ though
Thanks for the info… I actually tried using a hair dryer to heat the fins but it didn’t seem to work out all the bubbles for me. I’ll post something once I get a small enough photo to post.
You need impregnate the wood with epoxy first, sand them back and glass them as the temp of the fins is falling…when the wood is breathing in, not out…
It’s the out that causes the bubbles…
Also pay attention to how you mix the resin, fold it together for a long time, don’t whisk…
Hope this helps…
…go buy a heat gun
The fins probably have too much glass/resin to pull the bubbles out with just a hair dryer. It ended up working well with the gloss coat. I’ll just post one pic here. Some other good ones on another thread called “question about resin tip” or something like that.
wow MattWright,
how deep is your swimming pool?
when’d you put it in?
if that’s your board, that looks awsome!
Nice gloss and swirl in epoxy. How about a bigger pic to show how the rest fo the resin color looks.
Thanks guys,
That was half white, half green. Poured into a smaller cup in fourths. Stirred lightly a couple times. The mistake I made was to pour too much in one spot. So I had to work the resin to wet out the cloth. I would suggest pouring the resin out much thinner and try to hit as much cloth as possible before having to use the squeegee. It looked like green and white taffy being pulled just after pouring. Should have taken a picture of that! Now it has more of a mint/smoke look. Still came out pretty sweet though I think. Here’s a pic of the overall and one from the side.
Mattwright,
You’re right I think I put the epoxy on too thick and could not thin out the epoxy enough to remove the bubbles on my first try. I’ve done a few tests by heating up the epoxy prior to adding the additive F and hardener and it looks like I can get almost all the bubbles out now. I’ll take another try at a new set of fins and will post the results when I’m done. Thanks.
I like the effect! It looks like you meant to do it that way. Did you/are you going to polish that gloss? what about the tapeline?