I am looking to laminate my board under a pavilion. there are no walls, but there is a roof overhead. Will this be enough protection from uv rays, so that the resin will not cure until i take it out from under the roof?
NO. Not if you are using solarez or suncure or others. You need to be completely out of the sun and away from any reflective or refracting UV. Unless you are looking for a real bumpy mess. Some even suggest using fluorescent lamps is a no go, but I have not had any real problems with fluorescents. Of course, full spectrum lighting is always nice. Both solarez and suncure go off very quickly. They are great options as far as working time, proper mixing volumes, and cleanup for novices, but without a proper facility it can be problematic. It is a complicated issue to tackle for the home builder. Garages/work-sheds are probably the best bet, but then you have the potential of styrene smell around your house for nearly ever (lots of potential for unreacted resin).
After glassing a board with uv resin in my garage, my whole house smelled like resin. The smell stayed for weeks if not months. I found it a hassle to move the board in and out of the sun. Not to mention dealing the un cured resin that managed to get under the cardboard I layed down. If you don’t use any catalyst the resin takes a while to go off with the ambient light. If you do use catalyst a lot of the benefits of uv resin no longer apply, such as easy tool clean up and being able to save excess resin. I think if you have the right set-up uv resin could work great. Thats just my expereince, who knows though could work out for your situation.
I learned the hard way 1 time, I have a glass shop where my racks line up against my rollup door, we are set up for UV so using the resin. I was laminating and it was hot so I rolled up my door about 15 inches to put box fans in, the light reflecting from the concrete outside on the other side of door kicked the underneath of my rails before i could smooth them. UV is everywhere, When glassing UV you really need to think along the lines of Film/Darkroom. http://www.surfboardglassing.com
I glass in a garage. My garage door has a line of window’s running horozontally. This at first was a hinderance because I was a lousy laminator and the resin would start to kick a little early. I tried to cover the windows with a blanket and duct tape and that helped. However, after a few glass jobs, my skills increased and the little bit of UV light coming in is actually a big benefit. The light acts as a vrey subtle curing agent that gives me enough time to do what I need to do to get a great lam job with the benefit of the glass starting to adhere the foam. This way the rails have slightly kicked and the top or bottom have begin to set up as well, thus making it very easy to clean up the laps and move the board in and out of the sun. Drew
I covered my windows with black trash bags.The overhead flourescent lights did not affect things too much.I always add a little catylist to the resin so the drips snd mess in the room harden up.I clean the tools before I take the board out in the sun for curing.UV resin is the best thing I have seen for non production board building. RB
i laminated this weekend for the first time with suncure. I did it under my house (its on stilts) and put a shade over the door so there was no direct sunlight at all - but the uvs must have been bouncing around in there like crazy because that stuff started to kick way faster than if it was catalyzed with MEKP, even when i mixed the suncure with regular uncatalyzed resin like 60/40. Maybe i just got a bucket with a bit too much uv catalyst in it. It worked out though - i just had to work fast! I thought "so much for the extended working time to get everything perfect…"so if that what you are looking for, you need to really block off all the sources of UV - laminating under a wall-less roof wont work unless you work really fast. The best method for me is to use normal catalyst - kick it on the slow side, but add some UV powder (or a bit of suncure resin) to it, so it has the normal resin working properties but when you drag it out in the sun - it finishes its cure quickly to be ready for the next stage.
Howzit Richard, The refracting UV rays got to it. You have to use UV in an totally enclosed area. Aloha, Kokua
Richard, I have kicked off batches after the sun has gone down over the mountain behind my shop but it’s still light out. Direct sun just kicks it off faster. Aloha, Kokua