A MUST SEE- radical way on plywood epoxy finish job

[hoytedow]

I buy the poly sans printing.

 

[aaronhl]

4 mil or 6 mil polyethylene works.

Where can this be purchased?

 

[El_Guero]

Home depot, Lowes, or on line.

You can usually find it as painters drop cloth.

And some people use thicker polyethylene and use that as their skin in a skin on frame (SOF).

Bypass the wood skin entirely. It does puncture easier than polyester laid up in SOF.

wayne

 

[hoytedow]

Home depot, Lowes, or on line.

You can usually find it as painters drop cloth.

And some people use thicker polyethylene and use that as their skin in a skin on frame (SOF).

Bypass the wood skin entirely. It does puncture easier than polyester laid up in SOF.

wayne

Correct you are.

 

[tom28571]

Threads like this tend to develop a life of their own with way too much speculation and too little actual experience. This is a technique that works wonders in small repair areas but is not so easy in larger areas.

The bugaboo is getting the bubbles out, which is kind of glossed over in Blazzy's article. For me, that was the devil found in the details. In spite of following instructions as well as possible, there were lots of bubbles left. They were not visible in the beautiful glossy surface from several feet away but were there in the form of many small craters up close. Filling them negated any advantage to the technique. Perhaps it is a method that can be learned but the curve is steep and can be time consuming and expensive as well.

 

[Yellowjacket]

Threads like this tend to develop a life of their own with way too much speculation and too little actual experience. This is a technique that works wonders in small repair areas but is not so easy in larger areas.

The bugaboo is getting the bubbles out, which is kind of glossed over in Blazzy's article. For me, that was the devil found in the details. In spite of following instructions as well as possible, there were lots of bubbles left. They were not visible in the beautiful glossy surface from several feet away but were there in the form of many small craters up close. Filling them negated any advantage to the technique. Perhaps it is a method that can be learned but the curve is steep and can be time consuming and expensive as well.

Exactly. The technique does work, but if you have any bubbles those end up being tiny (or large) dimples in the finish. If your resin blushes, they have blush on the surface of the hole. If you don't clean the blush out of the holes and you try to brush resin over it to fill the holes, the resin will fisheye and not fill the hole.

What you really need to do is go into EACH hole with a small drill bit and clean out the hole and then come back and squeegee epoxy into each hole and skim it off so that it can be finish sanded. It's a royal PITA. Not as messy as sanding off brush strokes, but not that much less work.

IF you can roll out EVERY bubble, it comes out stunning and works like a charm, but it isn't as easy as it sounds or looks, and the bigger the area the harder is to get them all. As I said, I've had very good luck with the WalMart vinyl on a 21"x13" transom area, but less with mylar on a much bigger bottom using mylar since it's harder to get the bubbles out of the mylar than it is the more flexible vinyl.

 

[tom28571]

Exactly. The technique does work, but if you have any bubbles those end up being tiny (or large) dimples in the finish. If your resin blushes, they have blush on the surface of the hole. If you don't clean the blush out of the holes and you try to brush resin over it to fill the holes, the resin will fisheye and not fill the hole.

What you really need to do is go into EACH hole with a small drill bit and clean out the hole and then come back and squeegee epoxy into each hole and skim it off so that it can be finish sanded. It's a royal PITA. Not as messy as sanding off brush strokes, but not that much less work.

IF you can roll out EVERY bubble, it comes out stunning and works like a charm, but it isn't as easy as it sounds or looks, and the bigger the area the harder is to get them all. As I said, I've had very good luck with the WalMart vinyl on a 21"x13" transom area, but less with mylar on a much bigger bottom using mylar since it's harder to get the bubbles out of the mylar than it is the more flexible vinyl.

I tried the suggested thicker film and found that the bubbles did not want to move to the edges easily and many were left. I used a hypo syringe to fill the craters a bit proud and sanded the resultant bump level. the whole affair did not appeal to me as it was almost impossible to get them all at once and several attempts were necessary. Simply squeegeeing epoxy was not always effective either as entrapped air prevented filling the craters with epoxy. I'm sure that there are more precise workers than me but I am fairly skilled and think that the average builder is doomed with this technique on large areas. Anyone who makes it work to perfection has my admiration.

 

[El_Guero]

go skin on frame.

upchurchmr built some beautiful one if my memory serves us correctly ....

wayne