I did the most beautiful resin swirl ever, classic. When I was finished I realised I never catalysed the base coat Doh!
The un catalised portion are mainly the rails, there are some patches accounting for about 10% of the bottom. What options do I have. I have 1 layer 6oz down and I was thinking of putting down a layer of clear 6oz over it and cutting off most of the rail glass.
Any help appreciated folks
Most guys would just brush on a thin coat of slightly hotbatched sanding resin, let cure, sand lightly, and sandcoat (hot).
Gotta let it cure a little longer than normal coats, since it has to penetrate the uncatalysed resin a little.
Two days should do the job.
Yeah LeeDD got it.
I lam’ed my first board with very little catalyst and when I noticed that it wasn’t gelling I looked up the archives and tried using a hot batch of sanding resin over the sticky lam coat. it worked!
Rio
Sorry to say, I think those uncatalyzed patches will never fully cure.
We read, time and again, of similar mistakes. I’ve done it myself, at least once that I remember; fortunately it was only a hotcoat and I could scrape it off, catalyze, mix, then thoroughly brush-mix it back on.
Uncatalyzed resin, impregnated into glass and foam, simply isn’t going to be set off through its depth by an overcoat of slightly hotter resin. The physics of the reaction just don’t allow the catalyst in the top coat to “penetrate” and do any good with the resin already laid down, particularly since you physically can’t mix them. The time frame alone of the overcoat gelling works against you.
The overcoat will set on the surface of the underlying uncatalyzed material. It might “penetrate” a few percent due to physical action of brushing/squeegeeing, but that’s it.
It’s for you to decide if the extent of soft patches, and the degree to which they are soft, will be acceptable; and what you’ll do about it.
but won’t resin eventually harden without catalyst?
perhaps you could do the over coat and then just shelf it for a while, perhaps in some plastic bags in the sun… if it was mine i would put it into my stack of boards that need ding repair guaranteeing that i would not touch it for at least six months…
At least it’s only a surfboard…
When I was sixteen I had a job laminating for a local boat builder, these guys would layup the main skin of a 26’ power boat hull in pretty much one hit with about five or six guys at a time laminating flat out for three hours. One day I mixed up a “round” of one gallon buckets, something distracted me and skipped the MEKP from one, you can guess the rest. We had to scrap the deck of 20K boat.
If you screw up a first skin, you are err… screwed, if it’s secondary bonding or cosmetic you might be able to either chop it out or somehow force catalyst in, but still…
Put it down to experience I guess?
I’m not so sure…
Somewhere around board #8 or so, I forgot to add catalyst on bottom lam coat, after I had lam’ed the deck.
I just brushed a hotcoat, almost normal catalyst, and the bottom seemed to have cured on the outside hotcoat in the normal time.
Being that I got distracted for a couple of days, I just sanded it and it was fine, tho used up twice as many sheets of sandpaper on the bottom from gumming, but it was hard set tacky, scratch sanded, and ready for gloss.
However, seemed you can’t sand off enough with the gummy, that 7’4"er ended up weighing about 9 lbs., a lb. heavier than normal. Lucky for me it was 19" wide, so I could use it as a semi gun, one of my better ones…and I have made quite a few bad ones.
Yes, the board will probably delaminate at some point in the future. Adding catalyzed resin over green resing DOES NOT set off the first batch. Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.
Thanks everybody,
I stripped off most of the rails, laid down a hotcoat and sanded it down - using up 6 sheets of sandpaper in the process. I’ve done a pigmented deck lamination single 6 oz which ends at the tucked portion of the rails. I now plan to do a 10oz clear lam over the bottom without wrapping the rails then finish with another clear 6oz lam on the deck free lapped on the bottom. Then hotcoat and gloss.
Does this sound reasonable ?