hello everyone…
after i laminated i got this problem with my epoxy that’s partially still wet after a long day 24h… not possible… but during the night humidity is grown very up : is this the reason ? how can i do to solve it?
tnx.
you probably had your measurements off or did not mix it thoroughly enough. epoxy curing is an additive reaction between the resin and hardener. if there isn’t enough hardener for every little bit of resin, or it isn’t mixed so that each bit of hardener combines with each bit of resin, then those uncombined parts simply won’t cure…ever.
What is the temp out side? Most places right now are more than warm enough by now for a decent amount of kick.
Try placeing it in the sun for a while.
When you say “wet” do you mean tacky or still liquid?
thanks all.
i mean tacky, not liquid, temperature goes high and so humidity in the while after i’ve done the mix. i’m sure about % of hardener and resin in the mixing and i think i melt them down enough. it’s the very first time it happen to me.
i would like to know if there could be a solution before to scrap all the resin off the board and do it again.
Possible causes and cures…
-
use of acetone in prep. You would be hosed, next time use alcohol
-
you didn’t mix well enough. Some epoxies are almost impossible to mix without pre-warming the resin. Resin Research gives me this problem. Fortunately, if I pre-warm the resin it mixes and cures fine.
-
you didn’t get the ratio right. By a fair amount. Usually a near miss on the ratio is no big deal, you’d have to be off by a fair amount
My guess is you contaminated the resin (acetone or something else other than denatured alcohol), or you have mixing problems.
any solution?
Quote:
any solution?
heat to 100 degrees F, wait, and pray…
If it doesn’t cure hard as a rock the underlying
lam will be bad…
If you’re a gambling man…take it outside & hose it off. I’ve laminated with epoxies in high humidity and they still seem wet - even kind of slick-wet or slimy - the next day. It can turn out to be moisture that rose out during the curing process. It will hose off white & bubbly, but you’ll be left with a nice, dry lam.
Of course, if you’ve only laminated one side & the other side is still bare foam or wood, the hose might not be the best idea…dry washing off a small area with a wet rag & then wiping with a dry one. That’ll tell you all you need to know.
Can someone clarify Blakstah’s acetone reference here. I know it’s the wipe down but…
I wiped down my lam with denatured alcohol many times before the hot coat/gloss coat and to help to thin out the 1:1 Fiberglass Hawaii epoxy I shot it with 2%-5% of acetone to make it flow hopefully like RR with additive F. I noticed than it poured like water and really laid out smooth and super shiny like glass. Too bad the bugs liked it just as much as it was drying out in the back yard…
Unfortunately now I’m trying to sand (started at 220) the bugs out of hyperglossy epoxy finish, and I’ve run into a couple of wet spots as well…
Questions:
-
Is it correct to thin non-RR epoxy out with acetone( I swear I read Greg Lohr saying it was okay)? or am I supposed to use Denatured Alcohol as a thinner like styrene with poly?
-
Is this just a mixing problem caused by the acetone(noticed alot of air bubbles during the heavy stirring and bubbles zooming on the top of the resin as I poured it out. Luckily I could slush the coat around with my brush to pull all the bubbles off as the resin was like water. The epoxy leveled out on its own which was pretty cool, I was surprised at how shiny it was afterwards… If I didn’t have the bugs the hotcoat/gloss wouldn’t have required anymore handling…
-
Can I just fix this by shooting a super hot mix over the wet stuff…
-
I understand you can add a surfacing agent to the FH epoxy like RR. FH needed to make some more surfacing agent in the back when I went there but has anyone made their own surfacing agent for Epoxy (other than Greg’s RR) versus poly?
Thanks…
Learning everyday how hard this stuff is…
I’ve thinned epoxy with toluene before. Acetone seems to affect the curing too much, and I’m sure manufacturers generally don’t recommend it.
The pure citrus oil I have says it can be used to replace both acetone and toluene, among other things. I know for cleaning it works wonders.
I haven’t tried thinning active resin yet, so I’m not sure of the curing effects.
I might try it, maybe sanding will have a lovely fresh lemon scent.
i talked to Louis (they guy who makes it) at FGH about thinning the Clear 2:1 with acatone or whathave and he said he wouldn’t do it… in another post greg says something about a shot in the micro for 20secs for better sheeting out… FGH makes an additive… like F it is suspended in xylene can’t really say it makes much difference as i haven’t had any problems with the FGH 2:1 without it, i think it sheets out pretty nicely… mix mix mix mix seems to be the big answer, i set my timer for 4mins, pull up a stool and slowly stir…
Quote:
Can someone clarify Blakstah's acetone reference here. I know it's the wipe down but..I wiped down my lam with denatured alcohol many times before the hot coat/gloss coat and to help to thin out the 1:1 Fiberglass Hawaii epoxy I shot it with 2%-5% of acetone to make it flow hopefully like RR with additive F. I noticed than it poured like water and really laid out smooth and super shiny like glass. Too bad the bugs liked it just as much as it was drying out in the back yard…
Unfortunately now I’m trying to sand (started at 220) the bugs out of hyperglossy epoxy finish, and I’ve run into a couple of wet spots as well…
Questions:
Is it correct to thin non-RR epoxy out with acetone( I swear I read Greg Lohr saying it was okay)? or am I supposed to use Denatured Alcohol as a thinner like styrene with poly?
Is this just a mixing problem caused by the acetone(noticed alot of air bubbles during the heavy stirring and bubbles zooming on the top of the resin as I poured it out. Luckily I could slush the coat around with my brush to pull all the bubbles off as the resin was like water. The epoxy leveled out on its own which was pretty cool, I was surprised at how shiny it was afterwards… If I didn’t have the bugs the hotcoat/gloss wouldn’t have required anymore handling…
Can I just fix this by shooting a super hot mix over the wet stuff…
I understand you can add a surfacing agent to the FH epoxy like RR. FH needed to make some more surfacing agent in the back when I went there but has anyone made their own surfacing agent for Epoxy (other than Greg’s RR) versus poly?
Thanks…
Learning everyday how hard this stuff is…
Might need to check the archives. I’m pretty sure I remember Greg saying
-
don’t use acetone, ever, with his epoxy
-
you can thin with a small fraction of denatured alcohol, but it is preferred to use a slower hardener and heat it up to decrease the viscosity (this one was in response to a meecrafty query)
I think you should be able to find this with the search.
If the cure is not good, the epoxy is not good and the lam is not good, and putting a hot coat over it will not fix it, and usually the new hotcoat won’t cure well either.
Alright…epoxies are tight little three membered rings with two carbons and an oxygen; they’re strained and they like to be opened. Amines, hydrazines, amidines and guanidines all accomplish this readily…these are the compounds that are in your hardener.
Amines, hydrazines, amidines and guanidines also react readily with ketones to form imines…faster than they do with epoxies…in general. Acetone is a …you guessed it…ketone. This means that if you put acetone on your lam, in your resin/hardener mix you’re putting in a compound that will compete for the crosslinking component of your mix. Bad idea.
So, Acetone is ALWAYS gonna inhibit cure of epoxies.
What are you left with…denatured alcohol is one of them; try and get the 99% denatured, not the 95% as it contains water. Xylene works okay too…obviously…additive F works, right? Isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) will work as well as denatured (and great for cleaning up your beloved Thalco after a good lamming session). Problems with these are that xylene is not quite volatile enough to work it’s way out of the lam…so it’ll seem like it’s inhibiting the cure…even though it shouldn’t really…just takes a long time to evaporate out of the lam, an effect akin to water in a sponge; less noticeable with a slower hardener than with a fast one. The alcohols are really polar…ideally, you want the polarity of the amine and the epoxy chains to line up…
So…Toluene…used it on the last board. NOT recommended in your first lam; it’ll nuke your EPS (didn’t learn the hard way ;)). S’okay, most epoxies are thin enough that wetting out glass is no prollem. I added around 5% by volume to my hotcoat, along with heating the resin/hardener mix, adding the toluene to the warmed batch and hot damn if that stuff didn’t spread out like a river. Warming the resin is always the way to go.
Leave the acetone to the pu/pe makers.
John…
Yup Louis was out yesterday but the girls said they could make some more if I came back later this week I really like the folks there… real helpful… But it was surfacing agent for sanding and not thinning agent.
So your secret is to stir slowly and for a long time (4 minutes)?
Maybe it’s my poly brain telling me to stir fast, pour and go before she heats up…
I’m using fast hardener as it’s a hot coat…
According to everyone seems like I have to dig out the goo and redo the coat in those wet patches. lucky it wasn’t the lam just the sealer/gloss…
Off topic…
thirty year ago or so when I used to make koa and other resin sand petroglyph tables we used to build a wood frame like a giant picture frame and staple a sheet of mylar to it. Build a 1/16 dam using tape around the edges and pour on the resin then lay the framed mylar over the resin and squeegee all the air bubbles out. when the resin hardened and you peeled the mylar off you had a flat mirror finished table top that required no additional buffing or polishing…
Seeing what happens at CMPs with pin hole air bubbles in RR with additive F and now with my bug extravaganza, is there a way( you being a woodworker and all) to duplicate this technique when you do your 2nd epoxy filler hot coat/gloss coat?
The top and bottom contours might pose a problem but it seems like it’s doable some how without just laying a floppy piece of poly on it like shown in that old sailboard vacuum video. Again this is the gloss/hotcoat and not the lam pour. My original thinking was by making the epoxy thinner it would run better off the board by itself pulling the surface tight and smooth when it finally kicked.
you basically just described how i plan on bagging on the outer glass… build a frame cover it with a streachable bagging film, do the wet out table method of saturating the glass, put it on the board, trim it, place the board and wet out cloth on the bagging film, cover with another sheet of bagging film and attach it to the frame, pull the vac, then heat to get the resin flowing around the cloth… the streachable bagging film should basically do what the mylar did on your table tops… ofcourse i am gussing that it won’t be quite this simple with airbubbles and all but i have to start someplace…
as for doing it on the hotcoat i don’t think it would be that easy… buy my guess is with bagged on glass your doing very miminal hotcoating anyhow…
as far as i can tell, based on playing around with finishes of all types, is the only way to get a “perfect” coat of anything is to spray it on in thin coats, and even then buffin and rubbing is usually required to make it “showroom”
Ya John
I just tried it (glassing under vac) with some success but I was desperate.
This is what happened, I was trying to lam my veneer to my board with 4oz glass under using my new ACP pump. Unfortunately after bagging the board I couldn’t get the pump to pull any vacuum so there was no pull on the glass and lam…
You guess it… wood delam everywhere…
Well in my pitiful attempt to recover, I decided to lam under vacuum using some perforated release film I got by mistake inorder to try and suck to wood lam down. What I did was slit the entire wood layer (should’ve punched holes) with a razor then glassed over it with more 4oz and lots of resin.
I found this drop coth at Lowes that has an absorbant layer on one side and a sealed layer on the other. After covering the wetted glass with the perforated release I laid the absorbant drop coth over the release to suck up and residue resin. Although the sealed outside layer prevent leakage to the bag I also wrapped everything in 2mil poly before bagging it. I knew I’d get wrinkles cause I didn’t squeegee or smooth out the perfed release and you can’t see anything once the drop cloth goes over the release.
I was hoping that the resin would seep into all the slices I made in the thin wood layer and the vacuum would pull everything tight again. I’d sand the lam smooth and re-glass it again. What I didn’t count on was the vacuum pulling things so tight that the slits sealed up again prevent the resin from getting under the wood. So the end result is I still have delams but now with a layer of glass on the top of it. Like I said I should’ve punched holes into the wood like you spike your yard.
But like you said the drop cloth absorbant layer along with the perfed release sucked all the excess resin and made a smooth sandable surface where it didn’t delam. So I think your idea is workable like MikeJ and Kenz have talked about glassing the bag. I like Kenz’s freeze the wet out lam(pre-preg) idea as well to allowe you to smooth out the glass under the perfed release/peelply prior to bagging. Need a hot box for this though…
Anyway my only hope now is to inject 5 min epoxy under the bubbles and weight each one down till it kick one delam bubble at a time or rip the whole bottom of and start all over a again. I don’t why my ACP pump would pull worked fine with out the bag. CMP’s trying to fix it.
A comedy of errors… but I’m learning something new all the time… Like not shooting acetone into the hotcoat…
Funny in that I forgot to mention it worked perfectly for the deck hotcoat/gloss.
I’ll try heating it up next time with a little 99% denatured alcohol.
Ha, Oneula, I had those same kinds of trouble with my 12’ project. I got about 2 " Hg and that’s it - turned out to be bad bag leaks. I got spots that sounded hollow when I knocked on them - not bumped up like delams, but I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of airspace under there. I did just like you said - made slits along grain lines, peeled up the veneer with a knife, & stuffed 5 minute epoxy underneath. I actually used the 30 minute stuff, so I could mix a batch and do 3 or 4 slits at one shot. Used double-bagged 1 gallon Ziplocks filled with sand. Everything turned out flat & solid.
The slit grain lines show a little but not nearly as bad as I feared they might. I did the surface lam by hand because I’m still much more comfortable with that than putting it in a bag covered with peel ply & whatever other opaque disposables you need for that…I like surprises but not secrets. 
BTW, I keep a little electric hot plate - like a plug-in one-burner stove from Longs - and a 4-quart pan in my garage. When I’m about to mix epoxy, I pour the resin in its plastic bucket & put a pot of water on the ‘stove’. When it gets hot - drop in the whole bucket of resin, double-boiler style. I think I have a lot more control that way than I would with a microwave (I don’t own one anyway, they scare me) and I don’t want open flames anywhere near my garage…I get the stuff running like water if I want it to.
(edit: spelling)