Industrial Epoxy?

I have seen resins that didn't cure because they absorbed too much moisture. That is a problem with resins, most likely the hardener, that is not formulated to work in a non-controlled environment.

 

yes, a builder in West Africa I know from a forum used some road or sewer lining epoxy or some such and it was a complete failure, but he didn't realize it for like 2 years

 

A lot of chatter about Raka, but I actually have an issue with the Raka formulation. We had a signifant amount of outgassing with it when applied over itself. Now, the outgassing was not a problem, but the fact it did so bothered me. My preferred resin is Systems 3 Silvertip. I would also think Ampreg resins are good, but no hands on.

 

Thankyou @fallguy
Any cheap epoxy vendors/builders in America/EU/UK?? with a simular account of failure?

 

The systems 3 works pretty well. What do you mean by "signifant amount of outgassing with it when applied over itself"? The Raka 127 for wood releases gases in "ordinary" use while coating wood? Or is it the formulation for pure laminates when used under vacuum? By personal experience, it's preferable to outgas the bucket of resin (whatever the brand), generally by a few seconds of vacuum, just after mixing the resin and the hardener if later you are going to use it in a laminate cured under vacuum.

 

It outgassed for us on neat coats a LOT. We used a heat gun. We had only about 24 square feet, but it did so on all 3 applications.

Silvertip is formulated to minimize outgassing. My only criticisms of them are the hardener tinting is always varying and it just bugs me because I am always nervous the kick times will also vary.

But I have used about 300 gallons of their products without any formulation issues.

I got a little frustrated with them at one point for not having more information on wetbagging in their datasets, but the issue I consistently have wetbagging is microvoids and had nothing to do with the resin as far as I can tell.

 

When you apply epoxy, there is an exothermic reaction, the epoxy gets warm (or even too hot to touch if the epoxy thickness is too much). The wood hull material is cellular, and has many thousands of air pockets. When the epoxy gets warm, or if heat is added by any other means during the cure, the air in the wood expands, and produces gas bubbles in the epoxy surface. This will occur with any brand of epoxy.

Watching the epoxy cure, and tipping the gas bubbles that form is standard procedure for applying epoxy and fiberglass cloth over a wood hull. I try to warm the wood before the epoxy is applied, then if I can keep temperatures cooling during the epoxy application and cure, the air cells contract, and epoxy saturation into the wood is improved. Fortunately my boat building workshop has heat and air conditioning so temperatures can be controlled. Daily weather temperature variations can accomplish the same thing quite often. Either way seems to work well in my experience.

 

Very good explanation. Also using the heatgun will accelerate the process. Whatever air bubbles left in the mixture will expand rapidly.

 

I was surprised to see outgassing occur over already sheathed wood.

 

what is that big black tank for at the dock? Pure water for a steam boat?

or fuel?

giant fender for ship?

so curious me

 

Looks like a ship size fender.

 

Big ship fenders

 

Me likes the boat.

 

Some time ago in response to sone nitwittery being discussed at the time I posted a short SciFi piece where a starship captain, whose ship was approaching the Earth for the first time, was expressing his shock and disbelief that his science officer had just told him he was detecting a Class 8.5 Stupid from the 3rd planet.

"That's impossible!" the captain stammered, "The planet of Hey, Watch Me Do This only ever reaches midrange Class 7 Stupid and it's the stupidest planet in the known universe."

Later on I joked that there is really no such thing as dark matter or dark energy ... all the rest of the universe is trying to get away from Earth and the "dark" bits are just what can hide from us as well as try to move farther away.

 

I assume they were landing USA, DC perhaps?