Why glassing is the devil's work

General Discussion
1

At the risk of being chucked off the site for world’s most unsightly glass job, I would like to share with you my first time glassing experience of my 6’0 fish. I used conventional poly and a yellow pigment. am yet to hot coat (or in otherwords am yet to decide wether I should throw it at the dump). Be warned, the photos are pretty ugly and if there are any children around, send them off to bed.

It went a little something like this -

get up early (6am) glass bottom with 6oz and poly. cause its cool, plenty of time to get the cloth wet and laps done. had a lot of trouble with the nose, pins and but crack. these areas continued to give me grief up until the end. all in all, bottom looks ok apart from a wet patch here and there. When I go to do the deck with the two layers of 6oz, the resin goes off too fast and im left with a board 1/2 done. lucky i had some resin ready to use but that went off too quick too and I still had some of the laps to do.

the end result of all this poor planning and technique is a messy lam job.

  1. some laps didnt stick

  2. small dry patches

  3. nose, but crack and pins look horrible,

  4. areas where glass looks saturated but is full of air

so, can anyone offer me any advice on how to at least try to fix it up a little? do I just bloody hot coat as is, sand and surf the bugger? (that would be my preferred option!)

Lessons learned

  1. Use UV Resin (Dad is lending me his garage for glassing - DAD -“wont smell will it?” me - "‘nah Dad, dont worry about it’’

  2. DONT use half a jar of pigment per side - this makes the resin very hard to wet into the cloth (or at least thats how it felt to me)

  3. When its a little hotter, use less harderner (again, see point 1).

  4. Dont drop squigee onto floor, especially when instead of a floor you have dirt, leaves and grass which turn your squigee into a miniture forest, and in the meantime, your resin is going off in the bucket.

  5. REMEMBER to catch all your excess resin back in the bucket IN YOUR HAND and not leave it to pool on the floor and in my case, on my shoes. Also, that extra resinn comes in handy for doing the laps too.

  6. next time i see my shaper im going to bear hug the old bugger out of sheer admiration of his skill and patience.

Have fun.

Ado

2

youre at the right plac efriend… the crowd on here are fantastic and will teach you a lot!

hang around :slight_smile:

great pics too… my opinion would be to use a sharp blade to cut away the ragged edges of your laps etc.

air under the glass on the deck - unless this is a big bubble I wouldnt worry too much (for pin holes etc)

if they are really bad try to sand them open and maybe patch with a little more glass if they are deep - cut all your patches and line them up, then mix your resin and do them all in the one hit.

nose and tail laps - prep the area using techniques above, make them smooth but coarsly sanded (p80 min). cut some of the spare glass from the rail scraps left over into strips like 2" masking tape and the lenght that you need to go around the mistake. Glass on carefully making sure you overlap slightly with the layers underneath the patch.

once this is done and blended (use the above techniques to getrid of sharp edges)

then hotcoat…

if the look is freaking you out you can paint it after sanding the hotcoat…

post pics as you go!!

Riff

3
  1. let occy laminate the board. [this saves him eating it later tonight]
4

Just cut,sand, grind all that loose stuff away until its relatively smooth. Treat any foam exposure like a ding repair and hot coat-fill coat it. Laminating is an adventure for me,too. But, the good thing is it almost always repairable. Mike

5

it looks opauqe easyer than fixing a tint job…thats what sand papers for ill bet youl feel better after some sanding blending…you could tape off the deck and bottonm as you would for cut laps and paint some yellow resin on rails then pull tape and have clean lines on your rails then clear hot coat …

6

AJ,

As a newbie myself, I’ve had some trouble with gell times. When it’s warm, or the temp has changed a bunch, or if I’m adding a lot of color, I do a small test batch. I just do about a half ounce or so. It’s not a perfect test but it let’s me know if I’m hot or slow so I don’t get surprised.

Don’t give up on catalyzed poly. A little test can help alot.

From one newbie to another. Good luck.

7
Quote:
  1. next time i see my shaper im going to bear hug the old bugger out of sheer admiration of his skill and patience.

Your shaper’s skill and patience were acquired doing HEAPS of disasters again and again… Keep at it.

8

…wisdom there ! [I sense Balsa is definately speaking from HIS years of experience there , good on you , Billy !]

Aido , you know that lap disaster photo of mine , which made you laugh ?

Well, I had to spend AGES on that , to fix it

with first …

a stanley knife [which didn’t really work , as the resin had set like cement !] .

So then , with trepidation ,

I switched to a grinder [ a very , VERY soft touch was needed , as I learnt the hard way , of course … uh oh , sandthroughs !].

Then …

a handsanding block , then , finally ,

wet and dry , held in my hand . It all took a long time , but yes , it was worth it ! [ as I ended up with a fun fish !]

take your time !

make sure you have enough resin [ btw… sorry I didn’t mention you don’t need much opaque resin at all , compared to a tint , to get a strong colour .]

But , it’s all great learning experience stuff though , isn’t it ?!

Also, a LOT of the shapers here in perth are not glassing their boards , but send them off to be glassed . So , YOU are already doing the whole process yourself , which is good !

Now , for your board’s sake , DON’T let ‘occy’ your dog ANYWHERE near it okay ?! [I guess that goes without saying , after your last disaster eh mate ?]

…I hope you get / got some waves at rotto today …

cheers

ben

9

with first …

a stanley knife [which didn’t really work , as the resin had set like cement !] .

So then , with trepidation ,

I switched to a grinder [ a very , VERY soft touch was needed , as I learnt the hard way , of course … uh Oh , sandthroughs !].

I didn’t have the “very , VERY soft touch…”

I’d now highly recommend one of these little beauties (or similar) to remove the majority of the unseated lap.

http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?id=79030&ts=40498

I’ve amazed myself at just how possible it is to acheive a good looking board despite my foul-ups along the way.

Good luck

10

jesus h christ wotta mess. Not that I haven’t done this myself but it was a while ago.

some tips, which you throw in the can, won’t bother me a bit.

One: get someone to help you out. Preferably someone that knows a bit about glassing.

Two: Make a catalyst chart. In the first column, the quantity of resin from 2 cups up to 1 quart (use miliiliters if you want, and know that 1 ml = 1 cc check me on that); in the second column the number of cc’s of catalyst to get 0.75 percent catalyst to resin ratio. When you mix, measure your resin to the ounce, and measure your catalyst to the cc. Write down how much resin you mix, so next time you’ll know whether it was enough, just right or too much. Generally, with the Fiberglass Hawaii poly resin here (Silmar 249?), you will get 20 minutes of working time at 0.75 percent catalyst to resin ratio. Likely that poly surfboard lam resin is the same all over (no I don’t mean that literally, but close enough).

Three: safety and convenience. Wear disposable nitrile rubber (not latex) gloves. Wear a good, well-fitting respirator with activated charcoal cartridges. Have some paper towels and the acetone handy, with the lid already loose, to expedite and simplify cleanup when the lam is done.

Four: SWITCH TO SUN CURE RESIN… YOU’LL NEVER GET CAUGHT WITH A HOT BATCH AGAIN. Literally, take 45 minutes to play with a batch, then drag it out into direct sunlight and presto, five minutes later it’s hardened and you can get at the next lam. Yeah, it’s a little more expensive, but damn, it’s worth it for the reduction in lamming stress. 'Specially when you’re doing a fine triple stringer laminated wood nose and tail block monster mal.

All better now.

11

It’s a bummer to lose the materials, but for future reference if your resin starts to kick when you’re no where near done don’t be afraid to just pull all the cloth off before the resin fully kicks. Re-glassing a board is much less work than what you’re about to embark on.

I wish I could give you an easy way out of your current predicament, but it’s going to take some work. Careful with the grinder.

DON’T scrap it though, you can work it out. Or at least take the glass off and shape it down, if anything it’ll give you some good practice.

12

Hi guys, thanks for the advice. Out with the grinder and sandpaper. then patching up. then more grinding and more sanding etc etc etc…

Thanks for everyone’s encouragement and Ben, dont worry - not your fault that i used too much pigment. At least I know for next time.

Just one more question - do I fix the areas with laminate or hot coat resin - my understanding is that it would be better to fix with laminate?

I really really want to finish this board but i also want to do the best job possible!

Again, thanks for your advice. Tomorrow out with the grinder and more glassing. Pics and progress to come!

Cheers

Ado

PS - UV RESIN Def for next board or at least until I become more competent.

13

hiya Aido !

…do you have laminating resin left ?

do you have bare foam showing , that needs glassing ?

if not …

use filler resin , which sands easier …as long as you have excess amounts of THAT !!

cheers

ben

p.s. - didya get waves ‘over there’ today ?

14

This advise may be a bit late, but owning and watching Glassing 101 and the Master series by Cleanlines has helped me tremendiously. On the brighter side “Experience is a great teacher”.

15

Howzit Honolulu, Yes UV resin is a good thing, but just because you can work it longer doesn’t mean you should take a long time. The reasoning behind this is the longer the resin is on the board it will have a tendency to soak into the blank and make the board heavier and there’s the possibility that the resin will drain down out of the fiberglass giving you a weaker lamination. Even though I really like UV resin I still lam like i’m using catalysted resin. I would say that 20 minutes should be the longest time for lamination, I usually take about 12-15 minutes tops to lay up a board.Aloha,Kokua

16

Man, that’s even worse than my first glass job!

17

I haven’t tested this theory but maybe Kokua or someone else can confirm…

I’ve run into situations where I ran short on resin with maybe a little left in the bucket just starting to gel. I’ve quickly added some resin and hardener to the bucket but sometimes I run into a problem. My experience with both epoxy and polyester is that the gelling stuff in the bucket almost immediately kicks the newly added resin.

I suspect that once that molecular chain polymerization starts, it stops for nothing(?)

My take is that if you need to add more resin, unless it’s for a quick baste or cheater coat, maybe mix it up in a fresh bucket with no gelling resin in it.

I suspect this may have been a factor in the original post when he tried to mix more resin and the second batch went off too soon as well.

18

Howzit John, Yes adding more resin to a batch that is kicking off just makes the new resin start kicking right away. Even if you don’t add more catalyst the batch will continue to kick off. If there is a possibilty you might not have enough resin, I suggest you have a second batch in a separate container with the catalyst pre measured and sitting next to the second batch in case you need it. I also believe it is the chain reaction and adding more resin doesn’t stop or slow it down. This is one good example for the use of UV resin.Aloha,Kokua

19

Hey fellas - glad my crap glassing job has spurned another couple of posts and some really good tips. I did try to add more resin in the same bucket and also the ambient temp was rising outside where i was glassing. so yes, the outcome was horrible. But since then, i have grinded the yucky bits and reglassed were needed. It still is not pretty though but much smoother. Im hoping once i wack the fins on and then the hotcoat, things may smooth out a bit more. Pictures to come. Yep - def going to use UV resin for my next board. Have moved in to house for board making so uv is an obvious option.

thanks for the advice

ado

20

thank you soooooooo much for posting those pics. you absolutely made my day!!!i havent laughed in weeks (N.E., U.S. winters)and your photos brought the memories flooding back!!! thank you again.