What am I doing wrong?

I started the lamination on board number 2 yesterday.

The blank (deck only) was sprayed with yellow Behr flat interior latex.

  1. I taped the deck in preparation for doing a cut lap. My bottom lamination is carbon fiber.

  2. Disaster strikes, tape won’t stick. Run to hardware store, auto store, and Home Depot, buying tons of different tapes.

  3. Piles of tape in hand, nothing sticks. Duct tape sticks best. So I tape it using duct tape.

  4. I flip the bottom to begin bottom lamination, and tapes starts falling off the deck.

  5. I say screw it and pull the tape and laminate the bottom anyway.

  6. After the tacky goes away, I flip and cut my lap away. Except I tape over the carbon to create a guide, then cut.

  7. I get a few EPS beads pulling out when I pull the cut lap away, but nothing I can’t fix.

  8. I did pull away lots paint when I pealed the cut lap off.

Now I have to touch up paint and fix the few EPS beads that pulled out.

Board number 3 will be done next weekend. Why didn’t my tape stick?

Do I need a smoother surface? A lot more spackle to make it super smooth? I go thin on the spackle. Is paint the problem?

I’m tempted to give up and just paint the outside like a pop out.

Paint was probably still wet. House paint can take a while to dry. What sheen did you use? Flat would be best for next coats to stick to. Gloss would be the worst. Lastly, lightly sand the paint.

Lastly, house paint needs primer to stick well. House paint is also pretty thick. Did you mix it well? Did you thin it?

It was sprayed with a LVLP gun, without thinning. I turned the heat up in the garage during the night to make it sure it got extra dry. Garage was about 80 degrees the following morning. Paint was flat.

Dwight,

Stoked you’re getting into this! I been there and feel your pain. Best way to learn though!!

Wish I had better news about paint… It could be the climate here in Hawaii but I tried Latex house paints and things didn’t go well for me either and things went worse afterwards. I did a few big boards by painting the blank and all of them eventually delaminated and some within a few paddles on hot days. It seems like the resin can’t really get through that latex paint especially if its spackled first which makes an additional barrier for the resin to get to the foam. Once you start to put pressure by standing the bond gets weak. Even when I vented the board the gassing going on when its plugged, the pressure from standing, hitting chop etc wreaks havoc on that very weak bond of paint to EPS. One little failure in that paint bond to foam and the paint skin started to shed. Once it starts, its over. The joys of delamination are upon you.

I’ve used many glassers and the best bet is to allow the resin to grab into the EPS foam by using a thin coat of spackle or you can make an epoxy resin seal which you can even color. See all the threads on sealing EPS. A good strong bond is the only way to glass EPS especially the bigger boards where the gassing is much greater. I no longer spray air brush or any kind of paint on the bigger EPS blanks even if we vent them. No matter who glasses boards if they spray paint on a huge blank it is doomed to failure in our climate here. Not worth the bummer of the delam after all the hard work. Color the resin or paint the board afterwards seems to work best for the long term. I’ll even add… If you didn’t laminate the paint side yet get rid of the paint!!

A couple thoughts come to mind…

Make sure your surface is absolutely dust free.

Use the 233 tape (the green stuff)

Use a better quality acrylic latex paint (I like Ben Moore over Behr)

Bump up the acrylic level 15% with straight, high quality acrylic.

Thin with water to get it through the gun.

Once the paint has completely dried and hardened, you can just give it a wipe to get any remaining dust off, or spray it with acrylic.

Maybe next time just tape off the plain foam and lam / cutlap your bottom. Then mask off the glassing you’ve already done & shoot the paint on the deck… Do an inlay patch of glass over that, then a clear lam over that to span the cuts and catch the rails… its an extra step, but a lot more reliable for several different reasons.

WOW, thanks for saving my butt Blane.

I’m sanding the paint off tonight.

I’ll stick with the pop-out look (painted exterior) from now on.

Blane, please put a 14 ft race board in production so I don’t have to make my own. My garage is a mess!

When you wrote that some of the paint peeled off, that is a sure sign of impending disaster! Very cool to see you building stuff. Later on if I can ever afford it I’d like to build a better work area so I can really spend more time building my own stuff from start to finish like I got into before. Have fun!

Ha ha! Already in the works. BUT, we have yet to test it so I won’t do it unless it’s a sure thing it flies. It has to be super fast or forget it. I hear ya on the house is a mess thing. That’s why I am not allowed to glass at home anymore. My family has banned me from resin work! I sneak in ding repairs when needed though… Sshhhhhhh!!

Benny’s method is the same way I do my boards when using carbon on the bottom- easy to tape to and if you pull out any beads of foam you can use a razor blade to fill with spackle right next to the lap. In the future forget house paint and go with Nova Color acrylic paint then seal with Future.

Seems like some of these guys might have ways of making it work; I don’t know anything about it’s application to surfboards but latex house paint has that tendency to not bond super well if the application surface isn’t primed right, and it also tends to peel off in strips and pieces. So it doesn’t seem like it’s a good material for this application. Maybe better luck with an artist’s acrylic? I’m not sure I’ve never done it…