I would like to use volan glass on my latest board. Here is what I have to work with:
Clarke super blue blank
7.5 oz volan glass
RR epoxy
I have glassed a few boards using both poly and epoxy but have never used volan cloth. Will this combination work or am I asking for trouble with the super blue blank, volan and epoxy? Should I use poly with the volan? Would it be better to go with 6 oz silene glass and epoxy?
Thoughts, comments or recommendations are appreciated.
Thanks,
Rick
I did my first styro with 7.5oz. volan and cut laps. Boy was it tough to cut trough the resin and cloth, it hadn’t really cured off that much either. So be prepared for a wrestling match
After glassing a few boards with epoxy and doing a couple of with cutlaps I’m over it. The color is going on the foam and I’m freelaping with clear resin from now on. I suppose I could work out how to deal with getting a nice clean cut but as we know timing is of the essence when it comes to making the cut when the resin is at just the right stage of curing and you have to baby sit epoxy to find it at just the right stage. If you have a perfectly control temperature environment it’s very predictable but if you don’t (that’s me) it’s just too time consuming. Working with Volan would only compound the problems because the cloth is so tough to begin with.
Good Waves, Rich
Mahalo, Rich
I’ve done it. Any pro is going to laugh at me, but what the hell. I cut the laps with a grit wheel on a Dremel. Dusty, slow, a little anxiety-producing…but a nice ultimate result with volan & epoxy. Pinlines aren’t even mandatory, just for show. And its pretty easy to gauge how deep to cut within just an inch or two of getting started…
OK…
Jim says, doable but tough…
Halcyon says, never again…
Benny says, get the dremel and go for it!
Hmmmm, three answers from guys who know of what they speak, I guess I will have to mull it over for a bit…
Thanks for the input guys!
Those Dremel cutoff discs will go right through fully cured epoxy no problem. I’ve used them on carbon/epoxy kayak hatch covers, glassed oar blades and lots of fins. I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t work on cutlaps as Benny suggests.
The second problem that occured for me was, when I trimmed it and cut into the foam, it gave it a passageway to gas out from after going through the trouble to seal the blank and I had large bubbles along the cut line after I left the glass job unattended. It was too late to make them stick down, so I had to grind them open and re-glass those areas. Lessons learned the hard way
I thought about that line being a blow to the sealed blank and painted a little epoxy in there right before laminating the deck.
