I have recently made a hollow wooden surfboard and its time to glass her! Im pretty good at glassing and I am not familar with epoxy resin. I used oak for the planking on the top and redwood on th bottom. People are saying fiberglass resin wont bond to the wood as well as epoxy will. Does anyone no anything about fibbergalssing wood and if so what kind of epoxy should I use????
I used s-cloth from e-z foam, and system 3 epoxy resin from merton's. I didn't seal the wood first, just glassed over raw wood - no problems with bonding, although I didn't like the slow dry time! (12-15 hrs. before you could sand!). Next time I'll try a faster hardener.
Also, lots of good info. here http://www.grainsurf.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=22
I have only successfully glassed one wooden board, so I'm no expert. What I have learned is that glassing wood is different from foam, and you need to educate yourself on the steps involved. Search posts by Wood_Ogre. He has gone into a lot of details on the correct way to glass over wood. One thing that he does is spray dewaxed shellac on the wood prior to glassing. One thing you need to understand before attempting this is that you cannot sand it.
I think you will be happiest if you use Resin Research with additive F. I'll leave it at that, and let the real wood experts chime in.
You’ll find a lot of great info in the archives on this subject. I’m far from an expert, having glassed maybe 10 or 12 balsa boards and maybe that many again in sandwich construction, but here are a couple of things that do work for me. At any rate, they work well enough that I had my glasser keep doing them when I stopped glassing them myself.
Personally I like a thin filler coat to get everything nice and sealed before laminating, it reduces the final weight and cuts down on little air bubbles. Resin Research with the fast hardener suits me fine. Then I do a standard expoxy glass job - usually 4x4 deck and single 4 bottom, being careful to keep my freelaps nice and clean. Hotcoat (epoxy), sand to 220 and then scuff up with some 150 or so before doing a poly gloss coat. I just haven’t personally been able to get the same level of polish from epoxy that I can with plolyester, and a well-prepped surface won’t chip or flake.
You’ll read different techniques for the epoxy laps…some letting them dry and then knocking them down like a poly lamination, and others timing it so that you flip the board when the resin is just dry enough… and that way you dont even sand your first laps, which is kind of nice.
There are guys who glass their balsas with poly - and I have to admit that I have never had a delamination issue with it personally out of the maybe six or seven that I did that way, but I feel more secure for the long term with an epoxy job.
Enjoy the process and take your time, it will really bring out the beauty of the wood!
You guys have way more experience than me. I did use poly for my final coat, because I kept getting these "fish eye" dimples in my epoxy. System 3 is advertised as being poly compatible, and it was. I wetsanded to 1500, then polished briefly. Came out good ...enough LOL!
I've used poly resin in three boards, no problems so far. Always put a cheater coat first.
Jack
Using epoxy on hardwood boards like you are building is the best. The harder woods have tighter grain and sometimes are oiler than balsa. Also the drying of the harder tighter woods is not as effecient as the kiln drying of balsa. So you will have a higher percentage of water content wood with the heavy,harder woods. So epoxy is best-only problem I always see in the epoxy is which one to use. There are so many. Go with a high grade epoxy that you know someone is using on wood boards. I wood finish coat like the other guy said with polyester gloss resin, it polishes out much better than epoxy- little tricks to get the poly to stick to the epoxy- sand lightly with 120-150 grit,clean/wipe down lightly with acetone- shoot a thin poly laminate resin coat then after the resin is tight shoot your poly gloss.The laminate resin will stick better to the epoxy.WOW a lot of work to get a gloss coat-usually worth it.
Do a good job!
George R
I have built around 1200 balsas and very few hardwood boards,but that is my experience.