Well -
Inspired by all the awesome surfcraft I was exposed to all weekend, I was driven to get my projects back underway.
I went straight for the big one - glassing Megashreadzilla.
I actually am going to trying placing the fin boxes in after the laminate and before the hotcoat on this board. I'll still use patches to brace the Futures boxes on the side fin positions.
The laminates didn't show up at all - relatively speaking. I thought for sure yellow on a green background would work. I'm chalking this one up to the subtly excuse (although the only time I am arrogant is when I surf - pretty ironic).
The bottom deck (2X 4oz glass) went on surprisingly smooth. The rail wrap is going to require some cleanup before I laminate the top layer though - but don't they all - or at least that's what I like to think.
I am getting to the point where I consider myself to be a decent shaper - but I would still classify myself as an amateur glasser. And my stubborn streak of exclusively using epoxy is just another way of me making it harder on myself (although epoxy is far superior to all but UV activated poly).
Anyways - Enjoy! Tomorrow: rail cleanup/red pinstriping and top laminate
4 comments:
Why do you use a roller to spread the resin?
I am still new to home building. I have not seen that done before.
The blank is EPS so I had to use epoxy resin.
The epoxy is a "set and sink" type operation vs the "spread and push down through the glass" mentality of polyester.
The roller picks up the resin and spreads it more efficiently across the glass - a squeegee tends to just push it around.
I do use a squeegee to pull off excess epoxy once the glass is saturated.
Didn't you build a 14' racing SUP? Did you use epoxy on that build?
Yeah, my 14 footer was epoxy. I'm still learning. Lots of wasted epoxy.
My next challenge is how to reduce the weight added by the sanding/hot coat. I used a brush and it came out too heavy.
Have you watched the Greg Loeher video series on shaping and glassing EPS boards? I learned alot - especially the volumes to use per foot (about 2.5 oz of mixed epoxy and hardner per foot - 15/6 is what he used - 15 oz for a 6 foot board).
I also learned what a good lamination looks like - nearly dry weave - lots of texture.
Just mixed and laid down on a board, the right amount of epoxy will never look like it is enough. But once you know what a good laminate looks like you quickly learn that redistributing the epoxy all around is not that hard (again the squeegees come last - use a good rotating - not jammed up - roller and it does a good job of distributing the epoxy).
The sanding coat should just fill the spaces in the laminated fiberglass. When you sand the hot coat, you should bring it down to the point where you just barely see the weave - just before is best but that's hard to do (even for me - professional glassers are just about the only guys to get this right all the time).
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