Finally got the gloves on, epoxy mixed, rope of roving saturated, hung, and laid in a perimeter tape dam.
A bit overkill, but more deck width slight concave lip, and more strength desired.
Then gave the mini a tune up.
My largest urethane motor sleeves got swapped on, and the zealous bearings got serviced.
Full size neoprene enclosure gasket got fresh masking tape.
Need new black sharpie marker.
Flintstone Footed.
Curses.
I got these high quality condiment bottles to dispense my Epoxy resin and hardener, precisely, with minimal mess.
I labelled each one distinctly, Blue for resin, red for hardener.
This new Resin Research Bio epoxy and slow hardener are the same exact color, water white, perfectly clear. At 85F they are the same super thin viscosity.
I mixed a second batch of epoxy for my deck Diagonals, and apparently perfectly mixed 100: of resin with :44 of resin, instead of hardener.
WTF?!!
Damn my brain and my lifelong foot shooting proclivities.
The perimeter roving rope cured properly, but the Diagonals needed to be removed. I scrubbed off the resin as best as I could, but the curst fest is Ongoing.
The resin on top of previously cured epoxy will come off , but there was bare wood on the diagonals that it soaked into. This mistake will forever be obvious, assuming I can get past it.
Gonna gumm up a lot of sandpaper and barrel sanders, and need to get something stronger than 91% isoproply alcohol.
farkin’ ‘ell
Even if I did not shoot my foot, the perimeter rope did not come out nearly as symmetrically as I had intended.
This epoxy resin and the regular blue masking tape are not compatible.
Even where I know that properly ratioed epoxy was in contact, the tape got all gummed up, whereas with my previous APEX laminating epoxy this same blue tape would not stick to the cured epoxy strongly and would not leave gummy residue behind. Peeling the tape off was impossible.
An 120vac angle grinder on router speed controller with back to back 36 grit flexible 5” sanding disks flung the gummy blue taped mess into the bushes.
My real surfboard sanding tools are elsewhere.
Need to go get them and some new low grit abrasives.
Am still debating on how much on the deck to remove.
Old Diagonals are still good, the brown sugar grip is very thick in parts, worn or missing in others, and I need to redo the grip afterwards anyway.
Contemplating sacrificing some power planer blades, at least I can attach a vacuum to it, but it could ruin power planer.
Don’t really want to lose the burnt ravens.
Giant clouds of dust were made today.
Epoxy, fiberglass, birch, polyurethane dust everywhere.
I started with 36 grit on the 8 inch powerpad on the 1990’s era 12.5 amp Milwaukee 2900 rpm sander/polisher above.
It’s a powerful heavy beast with a ton of torque, and I was really leaning into it, far harder than I would use on a surfboard, and removing tons of material each pass.
Am super itchy.
Tried to save the ravens, but then decided to remove entire outer veneer of Baltic birch Plywood.
23 years ago when I made this deck, I didn’t seal it with Epoxy, but polyurethane, and this poly had nearly fully saturated that first layer of birch, and I want the new Epoxy to soak into bare wood for maximum bond strength, So that outer veneer had to come off.
I had thought I got it all and went over it with 220 grit but saw it was all splotchy, so went back to 120 grit and just went at it, digging come concave into it.
Gonna laminate it proper, with some 7.5oz cloth and might do some roving diagonals too, as reduced torsional flex is desirable.
Will let the 7.5 oz hang off the edges and cure to extend width, then flip it and add more perimeter roving to support the overhanging cloth.
I am designing a new flexible enclosure in my mind for this deck, but it might never happen.
Sometimes i get all sentimental about fibreglass and want to make stuff with it again… thanks for the reality check 
Lost confidence in the bond between new and old perimeter roving, so removed it all down to the old.
Busted out the wood burner and reused a paper stencil.
Found a folded package of bondo brand fiberglass cloth. Enough for Two layers.
Pulled 43 strands of roving from 24oz woven roving.
Am considering a teak perimeter, with Roving
Finally cooling off some.
Laid two layers of cloth on Deck, then 32 Strands of roving on perimeter, 16 above and 16 below the dual layer overhang, on each side.
Volan green halo.
Need to sand, and then stand on it, see how it feels and flexes before planning next stages.
..;:;,
Saft 4s1p VL30P Fe M2A2 50 Cal Ammo box battery can power window shaker AC unit for 35 minutes at max cool.
36-50 amp load.
Opened lid and hottest temp found hunting with IR temp gun was 6 degrees F over exterior ambient at 81.5f.
Different test used heatgun on Router Speed Controller, with AC on maxcool, to Dial in near 2000 watts inverter output.
200 DC input amps, tried to get it hot in order to retorque busbar fasteners.
But need to do 200 amps again from full charge as it barely got warm.
My bus bars are 1 inch wide 3/16” thick copper.
Window shaker AC uses 20+ less watts on max cool opposed to low cool.
Roving Bridge madness
This is 8 strands of roving inside 3/16” vinyl tubing.
I carbide burred an interior cone to ease sliding the tubes back and forth to allow epoxy to fully saturate.
Also ran a q tip through with some car wax to further reduce friction before inserting the 8 roving strands, and to aid release.
I have a long PVC pipe cut in half and taped together side by so it cannot roll. ‘The wetting trough’
10 bridges each rail, road side, so far.
Pulling the 3/16” ID vinyl tubing was fairly easy.
The green tape made a mess, but all harrumph cordless rotary tools and carbide burrs.
I am fairly happy with results so far.
You must be going through a lot of epoxy on this, the stuff is expensive.
It reminds me. My poly resins probably past expired and I need to make a plug, mould, and enclosure for the next build before it’s unusable.
I’ve been using 180 grams of this epoxy to saturate 32 strands of roving at full perimeter length.
180 grams of this specific epoxy, taxed and delivered, cost 7US$.
This epoxy has very little odor.
PolyEster resin’s pungent lingering stank is not tolerable.
I could not use PE resin here unless I wanted to listen to Karen’s complaining incessantly.
Avoiding interactions with Karens
is priceless.
This surfboard laminating epoxy is pretty impressive. I regret not switching to it earlier.
The non bio version is 19$ less for a 3 quart kit.
System3 ClearCoat epoxy resin is slightly thinner, but this RR epoxy wets out fiberglass nearly as quickly. The SYS3 CC was my former favorite Epoxy for laminating as it was so thin it would penetrate cedar through 3.7oz E cloth deeply, but it is also a very pungent epoxy. Very expensive epoxy too.
The Apex brand budget friendly epoxy I had been using for years previous is significantly thicker, and the resin is blue with the ‘optical brighteners’ designed to make white surfboard blanks ‘pop’.
I am not seeking a showroom perfect mirror glossy finish, and epoxy tends to ‘fisheye’ when the final layer is applied if there is any contamination, and often even when there is not any as if it is electrically repelled.
I have not noticed this epoxy attempting to fisheye, when I know for a fact that the Apex epoxy would have.
The Woven Roving strands don’t go perfectly clear, but I am getting far ‘clearer’ results with this RR epoxy compared to Apex epoxy, which also likely translates to stiffer and stronger too.
When fiberglass has a lot of time to absorb humidity it can make it far more difficult to get it to fully saturate, and the cloth weave might forever remain visible.
This happened to my Mini and Midsize which both are encased in fiberglass as well. This same Shitty Bondo brand fiberglass that comes folded in a rectangle from the hardware store is now on the Guppy’s deck and did go perfectly clear with this resin research epoxy, and has been in the same hot humid Florida garage absorbing moisture for a year.
I have also started using high quality condiment dispensers to store the resin and hardener.
I mix by weight, not volume
This RR epoxy is 100:44 by weight. So I squeeze ~120 grams of resin into my mixing cup, multiply 126.21 x 0.44 and then add 55.53 grams of hardener.
This is so much faster and more precise than tipping the bottles and trying to pour to a line, when mixing by volume, or watching the digital scale and waiting for it to catch up when adding hardener.
My experience with Pumps which are supposed to dispense the exact ratios, was poor, as either the resin or hardener plunger would need to be depressed a certain amount before any resin or hardener flowed, so I’d have to weigh it anyway, or Suffer an improper soft cure due to an improper ratio.
My Giant foot shooting mistake was aided by the fact that I labelled my Hardener in Blue marker, and my Resin in a red marker.
With Apex epoxy, the resin had a blue tint, and the hardener was mostly clear when new but darkened with age and humidity more towards the red and any drips down the sides of the bottle turned even more of a dark amber closer towards red, So when I went to mix a second batch of epoxy, and went to add 44 parts of hardener, I grabbed the red bottle, which had the resin, and did not notice until hours later when I went to pull my plastic and saw anywhere Where I used epoxy from that second batch, it obviously had not cured.
I wound up turning even the properly cured epoxy to dust too as I did not trust that i did not get unhardened epoxy under it.
So I mixed up the colors and mixed 100 parts resin, with 44 parts of resin instead of hardener, thus shooting myself in my foot as my self destructive sub conscious often demands, unfortunately.
So that mistake is a sticky dusty mess now in my past and the guppy will ultimately be better for it. It will be Stiffer, stronger, and wider than it would have been if I did not make such a rookie mistake.
