Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Picked up a complete set of tool shop forstner bits for $27! Irwin brand was 21 bucks for 1 bit! I figure I won't use them THAT much, so having them around in different sizes will come in handier than having a high end tool in ONE size.

Cheap plastic garboard drain is installed and sealed up tight! It'll do til I get a proper stainless drain and the transom sealed up with 'glass.

 

[88BLiner]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

I planned using a 1 inch hole saw for my drain. I have a lot of sizes available because of my business and figured I would just use them.

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Well, I've got to say, the forstner bit was much smoother to cut through the transom than a hole saw would have been. Personally, I won't use a hole saw unless I can't get a forstner bit big enough ( and they go up to the 4 inch range! )

 

[Phantom383]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Great progress!
Keep up the good work

 

[jcsercsa]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Hay Mike I used a hole saw bite , the ones you use to drill the holes in a door !! I got a set that goes from 1/2 to 4 inchs . They worked great !!! John

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Found a place to source resin locally...yay! $36/gal for polyester w/hardener! I can live with that! I picked up a gallon and a nice easy to clean roller for breaking air bubbles. They have all the other types of fiberglass that I could possibly want to buy at prices that are easily comparable to anything I can find online, and I like that I can talk to the shop owner face to face for information. I am a happy guy today!

I'll have some pictures up soon!

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Grrr...! I don't know about this fiberglassing thing.....I'm a little down on it right now. I had everything pre cut, laid out and organized. Started putting the resin on a corner and stuck my corner piece on....mat saturation was crap. So, I tried adding more resin thinking I was short on the amount of resin it needed. Okay, I'm seeing progress, but how much resin does this stuff need in order to saturate? I was using the nice little ribbed roller to get rid of air bubbles, and all I'm doing is rolling out the resin, not the air! And it's just not conforming at all.

I'm getting the sneaky feeling that the resin I'm using isn't breaking down the binder in the glass mat I'm using

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Well, this is the three stages I went through. Prep, prep and more prep. Then I laid 2 pieces of glass on to get it to get a proper exothermic reaction. I was rolling resin OUT of the glass. I put wax paper on it and went in the house for 15 minutes and came back out and pulled it off. There was no change. It was FULL of air pockets.

Not happy with the results, and the fact that it is the TRANSOM and I'm not screwing around with that....I pulled the 2 layers of glass off in disgust.

I have let myself down and have resigned myself to the BBQ for the evening...it is gas and has a faulty ignitor......

So, I'm going to go to my supplier tomorrow morning and talk with him and probably buy some supplies.

Man, I had high hopes and had everything planned out in my head. Just gotta shake this off and take another shot at it.

 

[jcsercsa]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

OOOOHHHHH YEA Mike , you can to this !! If I did it you surely can !!!! You just have to stick with it !!!!!! Dont walk away from it keep rolling it, thats the only way your going to keep the bubbles out of her !!!!

I dont get whats the wax paper for ??? John

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

I kept rolling it! The more I rolled, the more air bubbles I got! If I SATURATED the glass with resin, it would wet out and look like it should. If I started to brush out the resin, I would get air in the glass. If I started to roll the air out, I'd get air in the glass.

What's the trick? I thought perhaps if I used the wax paper and then rolled it out, it wouldn't allow air back into the glass ( poor mans vacuum bagging? )

I wasted 1000 ml of resin on this already. and the stupid mat did NOT want to conform to any corners at all. Isn't this stuff supposed to be the easiest to work with? How much resin should I be expecting to use on a 20x30 inch transom?

 

[HopeSheFloats]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Hey Redfury, I'm far from experienced at glassin, in fact this is my first ever, anyways I found out today that{I think they call it - stipling{?} - I call it dabbing} the brush at an angle and work{push-like} the bubbles to the edge seemed to work best for me, I'm using epoxy and 1708 biaxial though and don't know what the working differences are...
just throwing out a thought...hang in there, you'll get it...you've come to far to let it beat you now.

 

[berry79]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

I haven't used one yet, but read good reviews of people using these fiberglass laminating rollers to get the bubbles out. I will be ordering some when I get to that point of my project.
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ating+roller&ndsp=18&hl=en&sa=N&start=90&um=1

 

[88BLiner]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Hey Redfury, I remember reading in one of the threads that if there are some air bubbles that you can go back after and inject resin into it with one of those epoxy syringes. Just drill I small hole into the bubble to get the tip of the syringe into. I am going to try this on my project but I am using epoxy and I do not know if it will work the same with Poly. Just throwing out ideas

 

[bitterboater]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

If I may, who is your supplier?
I get down to that area frequently to see relatives, and have a similar project coming up this fall.

Thank in advance, and keep up the good work.

 

[jcsercsa]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Yea Mike , its a pita, but its just roll , roll , and roll some more , till it starts to set up !!! I rember think i must have mixed it wrong it wasnt setting up , and then it started , I could just just get the bubbles out if i moved quick !! you only got a couple mins left when it starts !! just keep at her Buddie !! John

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Yeah, well....that just doesn't seem to work with this stuff. I found some glass cloth and put a layer on....that wetted out wonderfully. I'm just going to use cloth wherever possible. If you look closely at this link, you can see what I'm talking about. It doesn't get better than this no matter how much I work it. http://picasaweb.google.com/Redfury...hkey=Gv1sRgCJnR5u_858rxXw#5360311106612292914

click on the magnifying glass in the upper right of the image to see it better. I can't use it like this.

 

[88BLiner]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

After looking at it up close it looks like what happens to me when the resin starts to get too thick to soak into the glass. Could the resin you are using be a little too thick?

 

[chrishayes]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Did you seal the wood prior to glassing? If not, the wood is likely sucking resin out of the glass from behind. If you did coat it before this, did you sand the serface prior to glassing? I have had trouble with doing 1708 layers over other 1708 once cured. If I dont sand down the stitching of the cloth till smooth with the strands of glass I play hell trying to get the glass to wet out fully. I guess to me, if it isnt wood sucking out resin then there is likely something wrong with the type of resin you are using. Mat should just soak that stuff up and lots of it! One more wuick question that I just though of. Is the surface of the wood really irregular? It looks like maybe there are high and low spots.

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

After looking at it up close it looks like what happens to me when the resin starts to get too thick to soak into the glass. Could the resin you are using be a little too thick?

God, I wish it were thicker and stickier! It's general purpose laminating resin without wax. It goes on pretty cleanly.

Did you seal the wood prior to glassing? If not, the wood is likely sucking resin out of the glass from behind. If you did coat it before this, did you sand the serface prior to glassing? I have had trouble with doing 1708 layers over other 1708 once cured. If I dont sand down the stitching of the cloth till smooth with the strands of glass I play hell trying to get the glass to wet out fully. I guess to me, if it isnt wood sucking out resin then there is likely something wrong with the type of resin you are using. Mat should just soak that stuff up and lots of it! One more wuick question that I just though of. Is the surface of the wood really irregular? It looks like maybe there are high and low spots.

The transom wood isn't irregular and the wood was coated prior to this mess.

So, last night I said the hell with it and put on a layer of thin cloth I have and that went smooth as all get out. Used a plastic body spreader and it went on like no ones business. Except, I cut some small sections of that mat to use on the sides of the transom to build it up a little bit, with the cloth over them after giving them a good coating. Nope, still craptastical results.

I'm going to bring a sample down to my guy at express composites and see what he has to say about it. I might just have to change what I'm using with the stuff.

 

[PiratePast40]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

There are a couple of other things you might want to look at. I had better luck when I wetted out the wood first and then laid the mat into the resin. Reapplied resin and used the brush to saturate the mat. I also found that it might lift in a few areas. For those, I had a fresh brush to dab the mat back into the resin. Obviously it can get messy here and you can start to pull more mat off the surface than you're setting back in. If that starts to happen, use a brush with a little acetone on it. You're going to have to stay there for 5 to 10 minutes to catch areas that may begin to lift and take care of them as they occur. I make it a point to have several pairs of poly gloves allready out of the box and ready for when I get "Yetti paws" from working the mat.

I didn't have much luck at all with the bubble buster roller. It acted more like a pusher than a roller. Had just as much luck with a plastic spatula as the roller.

You can also take a look and see if the mat is made of several layers. If so, you may be able to separate the layers and use thinner mat.

Hope you get your problems resolved, I know how frustrating it an be when things aren't working out right.

Good luck and let us know how you finally work this out.