Wait for how long ?

[Erik, Belgium]

When glueing the sceond outer stem to the hull, I must have missed the resin - hardener ratio (my first guess) because the thickened epoxy still is not hard. I can touch it without any epoxy sticking to my finger but the epoxy is not set after 2 days now. I could remove it with, say a simple woodstrip. Should I wait any longer (few more days), or heaten the stemarea with a hot air blower, or just take it all off and start over again ?

After having sanded the first outer stem yesterday evening, I noticed that I could still move it around a very tiny bit from left to right (less than a milimeter). I tied it up with tie straps again.

This made me think: My West System resin and hardener are about 1 year old now. I cannot use the pumps anymore because the underside of the resin has set around the pump in the can. This was after the winter. My second guess now is that I 'm becoming suspicious about the resin. The resin and hardener stayed in a dark, not heatened but also none freezing part of the house during winter. A sticker on the gallon container says it should be usable until may-2005.

[Rod Tait]

I have had the same problem with my pumps over time. Clogging around the opening and not dispensing the right amount of ratio. I take a small cloth, soak it in acetone and then wrap it around the pump top and then seal with a small zip lock type bag and squeeze the air out. Leave it over night and the mess should wipe right off in the morning and the opening should be un-clogged. As for the temp, the resin should be OK. Put it in a bucket of warm water for a few hours and it should come back to life.

After two days and the resin has not set on your stems is a concern. I would try to heat it up and see if it hardens. I have had small batches that customers mixed up wrong that took over four days, but eventually did harden. How long are you willing to wait?

[Rick]

Erik, I have used epoxy that was several years old and crystallized, heated it up back to liquid with warm water, and it cured fine. My first thought would be that if the epoxy had crystaliized in the can, that may have affected the chemical composition, since the part that had crystallized might be different from the part that had not... ie. some chemicals may have crystallized out and not others, changing the nature of the epoxy.

It might be worth warming it up to a totally liquid state, mixing to ensure it's the same throughout and testing a small batch for curing time.

[Erik, Belgium]

Thanks for the input; I removed the outer stem this afternoon (what a messy business...) And glued it back on with a new batch of thickened epoxy.