Sunlight is the best for the backyard builder unless you find an old tanning booth on craigslist for cheap. I would rather invest in a good garage door and an outdoor drying rack. Sometimes simple is best.
Just my two cents from someone that just makes about ten boards a year.
I researched all that stuff when I used to use poly -
The lights have to be roughly the right wavelength, but the main problem is it takes quite a few of them to be strong enough.
The ones I was looking at, it would have taken about 12 clustered together in a square yard to be the equivalent of the sun.
Expensive.
So I bought some plastic film that the greenhouse people use, it transmits all the UV light, and will last years in the sun where normal polyethylene degrades.
Build a simple frame out of wood, and stretch the plastic over it, and batten it down. Perfect dust free environment, and use shades to block the sun when glassing.
I just got done doing a test with UV resin. First off the test was done because i’m lazy and didn’t want to set up the blinds over the windows, second the test was done because the blank was a MDi blank and it was going to turn brown within a day of sunlight.
But here’s what happened. I wanted to see how fast it took UV resin to kick with refracted UV light. My shop has windows all the way around it. Plus I have a huge roll up garage door in front. So needless to say it gets a lot of UV light, lots of windows, like 6 windows & and a 14ft garage roller. The temperature was 90 degrees out ( Southern California Summer)
I did the entire board with the door up, windows wide open, lot’s of light, but no direct sunlight.
I got 8 minutes of work time on the lamination, and 5 minutes on the hotcoat. It was a bit of a rush, but it worked out fine.
So in your circumstance, I’d say you got plenty of time. Even with a door open, or a window letting in a little light. It’s not that big of a deal.
when your done, just let in as much light as possible. Let it kick a bit, then wlk it outside. What you don’t want to do is walk out a fresh hotcoat thats real loose. if you do it will slab off when you move it. Let it kick off just a bit.
Florscent (sp) lights will cause you grief only if you take 4 hrs laminating side.
Howzit Kensurf, My UV light system was 4 dbl bulb flourecent fixtures and 8 UV bulbs from Fiberglass Hi ( $18 each ) ,whole system ran less than $ 200. One thing to remember is you should turn the lights on about 10 or 15 minutes before putting the board under the lights, they need to warm up. I didn’t use a box, just a set of racks for the board, They would take about 15 minutes to kick off. 1 thing I did was to attach string to the ends of the end lights so I could pull them closer to match the angle of the nose and tail curve.Aloha,Kokua
We pick up used tanning beds off of craigslist. In the past we’ve attached the two sides to the wall and put a rack under them. A while ago I bought a used tanning canopy for $50 with an extra 12 new bulbs. 6’ long, rolls around, swings to different angles and when your done, folds straight up and down and out of the way takes up about 2X2 of floorspace, 120 volt plug into the wall. I’m in the Pacific Northwest BTW, they practically give them away here. Look for one.