tiny bubbles....

General Discussion
1

purely hypothetical:

so lets say some guy buys a roll of fiberglass cloth. he has purchased from this place before, and they are a pleasure to do business with. unfortunately, this “guy” did not read the description of the cloth before purchasing. when he opens his eagerly anticipated package, he finds a beautiful looking fabric and upon further inspection realizes it is epoxy compatible, silane…blah blah blah, TWILL.

said “guy” uses cloth on a 2# eps blank. after some serious babysitting, the cloth is all wet out, but air bubbles are persistent.

the cloth is so tight the air is getting trapped

i, umm…he sanded all the bubbles out, and is currently re-assesing the situation. the board is certainly salvagable (it survived quite well). my questions:

1)does anyone have any suggestions on using this stuff with epoxy?

2)how do the metal rollers work at removing bubbles?

3)can i re-use the rollers with epoxy (no acetone)?

4)does anybody want to buy 96yards of 4oz twill cloth? it looks like it would make some SWEET curtains.

  1. is anyone out there as stupid as this guy?

on the plus side, the glass is incredibly strong and uses very little epoxy. a 1 layer, 6 foot lam took about 6oz. thats pretty low for me. (no vac, no table). i can barely make a finger dent in it & its not hotcoated yet.

thanks for any help

john

2

Well, JohnO, I don’t know if I can answer your questions exactly…but I can share a similar experience.

I got a great deal on some 4 oz ‘crowfoot’ weave at my local boat supply place. I laminated one side of a board with it & got the same things you did with trapped bubbles etc…which lead to sand throughs. On top of that, the stuff - although only 4 oz - turned as green as 10 oz volan, so the sand throughs make it look like green & white camouflage. So had to re-lam on top with a yellow tinted 4 oz E layer.

So…to answer the part about is anyone else this dumb…it was after all this drama that I finally get on Sways and ask about the crowfoot stuff (kind of innocent, you know, as if I’d never used it) trying to confirm that the problems are with the material (couldn’t be operator error, now could it?).

Greg Loehr provided an answer: pretty much no good, unless I used a wet-out table. Same advice might work for you, especially if your temp is dropping & your blank is ‘inhaling’.

Otherwise, I learned to stick with the ‘normal’ stuff…

On the plus side, I did learn that epoxy tints come out really nice & even if you put them down over an already-laminated board :slight_smile:

3

thanks benny. thats pretty much what i thought too

how many times have the smart people here told the rest of us to

“do a test piece first”? apparently, i learn by doing.

im going to try the “test piece” theory out later this week. if the metal roller thing works out, ill let you know.

if not, i may start using it as toilet paper.

john

4

Don’t be too quick to use it as TP, or you’ll be posting in the I’ve got the itch thread!

5

If you use a roller be careful not to push too hard. Brush rollers are good too.

My experience with that style of cloth agrees with either the wet-out table, or wetting out the foam before laying cloth.

Keep the cloth tight and without excess resin, and as you said, pretty strong and pretty light.