Glassing question.

[tintug]

I am getting ready to do some glassing on a few things to get ready to start putting this thing back together. My main question and concern is glassing in the garage with it being cold out. I have a furnace out there but I'm wondering about the fumes. I can open the window and run fans with one sucking the fumes outside easy enough but I don't want the furnace running wide open and I sure don't want the window open all night. I'm glassing the under the deck rod locker and the under sides of the consoles. I can easily keep the garage at 70-75 degrees but I don't want to leave the windows open or worry about the fumes and the furnace blowing the garage off the house.

 

[alldodge]

An attached garage will be an issue. You can wear a respirator to keep your self safe by having proper filters on your mask. But the fumes will make it into the house if not sealed off. Now if your sanding the dust will get everywhere so don't do it

 

[ondarvr]

No one here can see the layout of your shop to know exactly what's safe, only you can determine that.

Use a heat lamp, but make sure you don't get it too close, you don't want to cook it, it will keep it warm enough. Putting a cover over the boat will help also.

Resin fumes (styrene is what you smell) are not as flammable as many other solvents, plus you can smell very small concentrations in the air, it will make someone not familiar with the odor feel sick before you exceed the level considered safe for an 8 hour shift at a manufacturing plant, but.......

The problem is the odor will creep through the entire house if the garage is connected, so the wife and kids will hate you, and the boat. So a small fan blowing air out of the garage is a good idea any time you are doing something that will stink. Keeping negative pressure in the garage is good.

 

[Speakrdude]

Use epoxy resin (like West Systems) and you will hardly have any fumes. It may cure slower in the cold, but it will cure.

 

[tintug]

Going to try to post pic of the shop but we'll see how that's goes.

 

[tintug]

Ok that was close but not what I wanted to do. Sorry for the slow learning curve on the computer but I'm way better with tools than this blasted thing....wish my kids were around...I will get this figured out and put a thread together from the beginning. I've got posts spread allover the place. Thanks again for all the help and advice since I began this project. There has always been great support and knowledge here for the taking and I for one am glad to have found it.

 

[JASinIL2006]

I restored my boat in an unheated garage over a winter. I used propane heaters to warm the garage. I had the same questions about safety, and after much reading, I came to the conclusion that ondarvr voiced: actual glassing, on the scale of a DIY restoration, poses little risk of generating sufficient fumes to cause flammability problems. (If you were running a chopper gun for 8 hours at a time, it might be a different story.)

The stuff with which I WAS extremely careful: MEKP (poly resin catalyst) and acetone. Anytime I mixed a bath of resin, I poured the MEKP outside and added it to the resin away from open flame. My biggest concern was using acetone, especially to wash surfaces prior to glassing. I always did that without any heaters, and the garage was opened and completely aired out before firing up the heaters. It slowed the process some, but "better slowed up than blowed up"!

The smell of resin really is pervasive; even the smell trailing off my clothes when I came into the house after a layup session was enough to cause the family to complain. Seems like that could be really bad in an adjoining garage.

Good luck!

 

[Flukinicehole]

Will it get warm enough during the day to kick? Reason I ask is I had a batch not kick before the sun went down and it got to the lower 30's. The next day it was still wet but as soon as the sun hit it it kicked. Lesson learned.