"painting the boat with a thin coat of catalyzed resin.

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jimbo
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"painting the boat with a thin coat of catalyzed resin.

Post by jimbo »

A friend suggested that coating the boat with a thin coat of catalyzed resin before putting the glass cloth on is a good idea. The advantage, he says, is that when the resin is then applied to the cloth it is less likely that the cloth will be starved because of the wood pulling resin out of the cloth and in the end less resin is used resulting in less weight. Does anybody have any experience with this?
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Patricks Dad
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Location: Warrenville, Illinois

Post by Patricks Dad »

common topic. Lots of arguments on both sides. Boils down to personal preference (IMHO). I've not done it in the past and probably won't in the future. Others will have the opposite view. You might do a couple searches on this site to get the old threads....
Randy Pfeifer
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Patricks Dad
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Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:11 pm
Location: Warrenville, Illinois

Post by Patricks Dad »

My earlier response was a bit lame (I was rushing to get out of the office)... :embarassed

I did a bit of the searching I suggest you do and came up the following link that might be helpful to you:

http://michneboat.com/Fiberglassing%20-%20101.htm

hope this helps.
Randy Pfeifer
(847) 341-0618
Randy.Pfeifer1@gmail.com
AlanWS
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Location: Shorewood, WI

Post by AlanWS »

I've done it both ways. Both work. The differences have to do with how well your hull is prepared before glassing, and how viscous (thick) your epoxy is. If you are in a big hurry, go for the one step route. If you are particularly cautions, coat the hull with epoxy before the glass. The total amount of epoxy winds up the same, so you need to apply less at any one time if you separately let it soak into the wood or the glass. In principle, the bond between glass and wood may be stronger with the one step method, but I've not heard of any delamination problems with epoxy. Those went away with polyester resin.

If you have very low viscosity resin, like system three clear coat, then I'd say you should either precoat, or make sure anything the size of a staple hole has been filled or at least mostly closed by water swelling (and then thoroughly dried before glassing.) This resin is thin enough to drip through staple holes to starve the glass in spots. It does not drip through staple holes that have been swollen shut. Very viscous resin may have more trouble soaking through the glass quickly, so I'd speculate that a precoat might be helpful there too. Incidentally, the people who tell you that you should use a roller for the epoxy, or that you can't use a roller and must use a squeegee, are both right. They are just talking about different epoxies. Make sure you are set up to use yours.

If you do precoat, note that if the coating is still tacky it can make adjusting the glass position to get it spread out smoothly more of a challenge. But you do want the precoat fresh enough for the next epoxy layer to bond well.
Alan
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