im almost sure i dont have a light leak in my garage yet my lam resin starts kicking after about 25 mins. do the follow lights emit uvs?
Floruscent?
Incandesent?
Halogen?
do these lights have any percentage of uv the could initiate curing?
or, say you need to cure a small ding repair. are there any sources-handheld of some sort- that you could use to initiate curing?
Florusent will kick UV. Incand, and halo are good to go.
Wait, 25 minutes…you should be way done by then. 15 mins max, try shooting for 10 mins, then walk it out side to kick.
so flourscent lights have some small % of uv then?
yeah i know 25 mins is a lot… im still a professional rookie at glassing! at this point glassing is still a good way to ruin a great shape!
Fluorescent tubes typically put out a spectrum that is fairly similar to actual sunlight. There is some difference between the warm white and cool white bulbs. In combination they put out an even closer to natural sunlight spectrum. They lack intensity so assuming they are several feet away as you are glassing, they take awhile to kick UV resin. If you put them close, they will kick it faster. Some people use UV filters - plastic tubes which slide over the bulbs to prevent resin activation.
I’m in san Diego County. My garage door faces east. I always lam in the morning. Starting around 9:00am. I use UV cure cat on all my poly boards (lam). Garage door open about 12 inches,Three floresence lights overhead. I like to do crazy resin swirls so I often add cat to the darker/thicker colors. 35-45 min lam time has never been a problem. I do notice things starting to harden after 30 min but it has never been a problem. Make sure your workshop has a clock and a temp gauge.
thanks for your repsonses guys…i’ll go with incandescent for a while til i get faster.
w
Hi Ray -
I gave it a try… to my surprise, even heavily pigmented UV resin went off OK in direct sunlight on an acid splash lamination. It was a single layer of 4 oz cloth and I tested on some scrap before doing the board. Please verify with your own test before trying on a real board.
Hi Ray -
I gave it a try… to my surprise, even heavily pigmented UV resin went off OK in direct sunlight on an acid splash lamination. It was a single layer of 4 oz cloth and I tested on some scrap before doing the board. Please verify with your own test before trying on a real board. Hi John , I resin swirled at least 4 surfboards with UV Cure before I started adding cat to the darker colors. I’m faster now so a little cat is good. Although my house is 8 miles inland I’m right on the edge of the Coastal Eddy. Some days it’s clear some days it’s not. I have done some crazy stuff due to the fact that the coastal haze did not clear but instead got thicker. One time water from the sky came down on a board that was trying to UV cure. If you see the board you would think that I palnned it!!!
You got to watch out for the UV in the darker colors. Sometimes it will cure the top crust, but not all the way through. As Ray said add a little catalyst to the mix. it’s got to be kicked all the way into the foam, just not the glass.
So then you think the lam is good to go, and you start the UV hot coat. You lay the hotcoat on, walk it outside, and the lamination starts to volcano and make the fisheye pinholes.
Just make sure your lam is kicked real good.
The Sun is the cheapest and most abundant source of UV I can think of. That’s what I use.Herb
Surprised no one has mentioned this already, but AFAIK, fluorescent tubes are filled with low-pressure gas. The electrical discharge along the length of the tube generates UV light, which is not visible. The UV strikes the powder coating on the inside of the tube and the powder is excited to produce visible light.
Sooooo… what has this to do with anything? Maybe the powder coating of your fluorescent tubes isn’t intact, and there are “thin” spots in the powder which allow UV to come through.
I glass in an enclosed garage with the door down to about 3 feet, then when the lam is all well and good, open the door and drag the rack out into bright sunlight. Cures in minutes.
Note on heavily colored UV resin: I recently did some pinline work and the extra resin in the can was hard on the surface, liquid below, after a week in direct sunlight. You gotta have catalyst in heavily colored UV resin. Note that pigment seems to slow the catalyst reaction rate, so the “normal” amount of cat for clear is likely enough for colors, though it will cure more slowly.
Hi Charlie -
I don’t doubt that in the can, the resin only cured on the surface. In the example to which I referred, a single layer of 4 oz cloth was used so it was pretty thin. I tried a sample on scrap before I did the actual board and in direct sun, the sample and actual board both cured fine. I did give it plenty of time before hot coating and there has been no indication of any problem. FCS tabs on the hoop? Yes, I had a problem with those.
