SilverThane SA-2100 by System 3 - looks convincing

What do they use to thicken the epoxy in the handy spiral snout tubes ?

 

Obviously mixtures will be proprietary, though if you call tech support for any of the major formulators, you'll get a basic list of materials.

I've been using 10 ounce cartridge tubes with a pneumatic gun for years and it's the only way to go if you have a lot of beads to lay down. A typical application for me would be putting a sole or deck back in a repair, where stringers, sheer flange and other supports might all need a bead of goo, before the sole or deck is lowered down. A 24' powerboat sole I replaced not long ago had a 1/4" bead of thickened goo applied to the perimeter cleat and each of 4 longitudinal stringers and 5 athwart supports. This totaled about 120' linear feet of goo in a time sensitive 1/4" bead. Some will have you think a baker's bag will do, but I can assure you, you hands will be shot and you'll be hard pressed to get all the beads down, before the goo starts to kick off. If pumping a caulking gun by hand, the same thing is true, your hands will be shot and you'll have a hard time laying bead fast enough to have enough working time to drop the deck or whatever in place. I'm getting my tubes a little cheaper than Paul sells them for, but I've been at this a while.

Lastly, the pre-packaged mixing snout setups the formulators offer, don't work in a pneumatic gun (at least West's don't). This means you're cranking by hand again, so consider this when it's time to lay some beads of goo.

 

I think its obvious that it would be silly and expensive to build a whole boat with squeeze tubes, but they sound like a mighty handy tool for the shop.

Painters would love a tube full of fairing compound.

In surprised the marketing guys haven't developed a product for painters

 

They have, both pneumatic guns with proprietary tubes and nozzles and hand operated guns, both with pre-mixed fairing compound.

 

I have not seen any prepackage fairing compounds in a tube...

Fairing wastes mountains of epoxy.

 

Surely the main key if you have a large area or long length of material to apply the adhesive to is to use a slower hardener to avoid a too early exotherm. A lot of commercial Araldite adhesives (not the retail tube) have quite long working times. Thickening is surely adding colloidal silica or equivalent until 'right' and any other fillers required. My preference is to get a coat of pure epoxy into a porous surface and then apply the thickened mix or precoat and sand the porous surface. Depends on bond materials and the joint.

You can use other adhesives like urea formaldehydes if your joints are tight and just cover with sheet (poly) and electric blankets for cure. Clamp by vacuum or clamps etc. Of course if your ambient is 30° C....

I've designed one of these mix whilst you squirt delivery systems and they work fine but you do waste a lot in the nozzles. However the mix ratio is pretty good and stays that way.

 

Sure... Im a slow hardener type a guy. Even with slow exotherm gets you.

With exotherm on your mind, you r precision and craftsmanship suffer

Hurry hurry

Fairing compound is particularly frustrating. When detailing you a concentrating on making near perfect inside outside radii and filling small defects.

As soon as the fairing compound begins to kick you can no longer spread it.

The blob of bog on your bog board is now history...in the trash..new batch.

Mixing fairing bog is an art...to much resin, to little resin and the sanding characteristics are different


Pre mix Squeeze bog for final filling would be nice

 

The premixed fairing compound is designed to be applied directly and immediately spread out or as a lot of folks do, apply a specific amount to a mixing board, where it's also spread out into a thin mass, so exotherm doesn't get you. This is standard practice, if you don't want any mixture (fairing or other wise) to kick off before you're ready.

Pre-mixing your own filler combinations is the way to get consistent results. Just fill a jar with the combination of materials you need and you're good to go. Anything else will mean inconsistent results.

 

I would love to patrol, point and squeeze, shape...move to the next detail, point and squeeze.

Major bog events obviously need buckets of bog

 

I don't know of any point and shoot fairing system. Fairing is all about procedure and technique and there's only a few methods that actually work with a repeatable reliability.

 

epoxy dispensing tech

hello to all

how about using this:

http://www.michaelengineering.com/Pumps/SuperDuty/VR-5/

for professionals of course, but still its a good way to cut down waste, time, ie Money, and some frustating moments.


as for the thickened epoxy fillets, im sure one can add the filler to the resin and then mixing the lot with the hardener. i think its a matter of finding a new mix ratio. giving the initial presence of filler.

what do you think?