boat stuck in mould

in your opinion do you think ive the pva sprayed on right

 

if you waxed a few coats and used lots air to spray your pva with a fine misty spray coat all should be fine !!

 

YEp very misty I had to put my hand right up to the nozzle for my hand to get wet.

 

also when it was waxed if i touched it, it would leave a fingerprint behind, but after putting the pva on it dose not leave any fingerprint behind

 

If you are blowing air across the surface and have you hand in the air stream the moisture will have dried off your skin !! at that point with dry skin and the air still blowing you can run you hand flat and gently over the whole mould surface and wipe off any dust !! but never stop your hand any where or the moisture that comes out of your skin will instantly dissolve the pva !!

 

I do have some concerns about your method for applying the release agents.

First, it sounds as though you did all seven layers of wax in a day. If this is true then you basically have one coat of wax on your mold, since the solvents in paste wax are quite capable of lifting and emulsifing a fresh coat of wax. Wax layers are incredibly thin even under the best of circumstances, and not giving them time to cure and harden BEFORE applying the next coat does not produce an additional layer...it simply lifts the last layer.

Second, applying PVA to your mold without following the manufacturer's recommended procedure is a big mistake. There is no good reason that you can come up with for not using PVA just like it came from the bottle...especially in this instance.

Tunnels and his crew are or were experts in mold preparation....you are not. They may have prepped hundreds of molds using this technic...you have not. They may have spent countless hours spraying everything from PVA to Gelcoat, and probably knew everything there was about the material they were applying and their equipment....you do not.

You have for some reason decided that after many hours of sanding, buffing and polishing that you're going to risk everything by employing not one, but two unproven technics (for you) on a fresh mold surface. Sir, you are asking for trouble.

You already know that your previous waxing technic failed, so you're going to employ the same method as before. You have never sprayed PVA nor from the sounds of it anything else, so you also decide to thin to your PVA by half and spray that...not really knowing if you even have a sufficient layer of PVA to protect your mold...because it's invisible.

I can't express this strongly enough...Stop what you're doing right now, and rethink these procedures. If I were there I would tell you to wipe off the PVA and continue waxing your mold for the next couple of days....at the very least. If you're in a hurry and time is of the essence then at least apply one nice thick layer of PVA...one that you can see.

If you are procedeing with your test layups then you have absolutely nothing to lose by either spraying or wiping on one decent coat of PVA. What you don't know and can't see is that fresh mold surface has millions of microscopic pores just waiting to be filled by gelcoat. That same surface is also chemically unstable...with billions of potentially reactive polyester molecules ready willing and able to link up with any suitable counterpart that it comes in contact with.

If you don't seal those pores and create a barrier between your mold surface and the gelcoat layer you run the very real risk bonding the two together....again. I hope for your sake that the Gods are smiling on you, and that you do indeed have the luck of the Irish because the way things are now you could use some divine intervention.

I guess we'll know in a few hours if things worked out...good luck.

MM

 

midnitmike my heads a mess, ive been told so many different things at this stage, suppliers telling me no need for pva, other suppliers saying there is and just to wipe it on with a cloth, instructions on a tin of wax saying to re wax after 15minutes, and on here saying one every day, i applyed the meguires wax on over 4 days 2 layers every day, i was convinced on here to go with the pva, so i had to wipe all the wax off that took 4 days to apply,
the 7 layers of honey wax went on every hour and left over night before putting on the final wax and waiting 2 hours. supplier telling me only 4 to 5 layers of honey wax needed. my head is wrecked, ive heard so many different ideas and ways how to do the thing now, i just dont know whats right anymore.
its too late now the first layer of gel coat has gone in. so its up to the gods now.

 

I know how you must feel and I'm sorry.

Everyone has an opinion and are absolutely, positively sure they're right. If we put ten guys in a room we'd probably come up with ten different ways to do the same thing...lol. All you can do is listen to those various opinions and then decide for yourself what's right for you.

At this stage none of that matters...what matters most is wheither or not you get a clean release.

Are you going to do just a layer of gelcoat on a test patch and see what happens?
Are you going to add a layer of matte to your test patch?

Or have you decided to go all out and do the whole boat?

It won't be long now and we'll have an answer one way or another...good luck!

MM

 

Yes you have to many things to think about so pull the plug on the computer and go build a boat Dont want to see any posts from you till you have a boay sitting on you lawn !!
about wednesday !!

Puttying on coats of wax one after the other as long as it gassing off between each wax you will be building a little thickness . coats not even if you leave it a week you dont build coats as such !

If you do pva as is recommened by the manufacture then you will have a mess ,But you already have it on so whats the problem why havent you gel coated !! its a time thing get on with it !!!
Get on and stop messing about . its working time pull the plug and work !! am not answering or reading till wednesday night when i come home from work !! bye

 

what i have learned about wax's .

Over my time in glassing have used differant waxes in the differant places ive worked . Have heard stories of multicoats and getting 4 or 5 pulls and not waxing between . personally i would never do . each artical that comes out takes wax with it . same with pva just about every pull the pva goes with the product .
Mirror glaze used to be very popular and every shop i went to had it , then it was honey wax the mirical wax but didnt take long and it vanished and TR wax was the wonder wax and most places i been in recent years everyone uses it !!. One shower manufacture we always used ceara wax , easy to apply witha damp sponge easy to polish and can gelcoat straight away and not get fish eyes . for the shower company we had tall moulds and had to pull the shower all the way up the mould . tried mirrorglaze and fish eyes appeared so extra fine coats of gel untill they cover so one down side . then when the shower was finished we used air to release and yes it moved and then stopped and bite up no amount of wedging and lifting could budg it It squeeked and made all kinds of noises but would not move any further , the mould was required for production so ended up tearing it off in bits !,It had released ok but would not slide one surface past the other . SO back to Ceara and problem immediate went away . ceara will allow two close fitting sides to slide against each other . tried honey wax same thing happened as with mirror glaze so after wasting 2 shower cubicals all the odd tins that were not Ceara we tossed out of our factory .
Was interesing because mirror gaze could be used as a base coat only but one application of ceara over the top was ok . tried it the otherway mirrorglaze over ceara and the problem immediatly returned . Regeatably ceara wax dissapeared in New Zealand and tr seemed to be the choice everyone used . i had left the shower company by then so dont know what they used after that .
Personally since learning my thing with PVA spray i will use any wax at all as its not affected when your PVA sprayed over the top ! like i have stated before its possible to not even wax at all just pva only but as that small back up a coat of wax just seems right !!.
The other wax i used while in Korea was the Johnsons soft floor wax ! its cheap as can be bought in 4 gallon tins and found it really easy to use !!,get a rag lay it out flat and put a big blob in the middle and pic up the corners of the rag and squeeze tight till the wax comes out throught the weave of the rag and just rub on , just one coat on almost anything and it will release keep the rag filled with wax in the tin with the lit on . .can pva ove it as well !
WARNING wear gloves when waxing !! The wax no matter what it is has lots nasty things that will get absorbed into you body through the skin on your hands !!!

 

Yeah, Johnson's Paste Wax, you can get it at the grocery store. That's what I first used. 100% carnuba wax.
The theories I always read was you waxed and PVAd for the first 4-5 pulls until the mold is seasoned and then skip the pva and even the wax, waxing every 3-4 pulls. Seasoning was the exotherm (heat) of the curing laminates driving the wax into the pores of the mold gelcoat. If you stripped or refinished the mold, you started all over.

 

Yip thats the one !!Its a really good wax and can apply on a plank of rought wood and it will stull release off . good for coating round the edges of your mold to keep them clean .
When we went to Korea tr and mirror glaze went with all our stuff to be used but unfortunatly neither were compatable with Korean gel coats and ended with Johnsons paste and all the problems went away .
If you wax you moulds and pva over the top the wax stays and the pva goes so you always will have wax on the surface .
I am all for wax dont get me wrong but from personal exsperiances i use pva sprayed fine as i know it works 100% every time and has never failed me ever !!.

A thin well rubbed coat of wax is better than 2 thick coats and just wiped over . Like you say its to be rubbed into the pores of the gel coat on the mould !.
going way back to when i first started i realised there had to be a better way than the instructions on the container . sponges rags wiping or pouring swilling round and tipping out is all a load of rubbish and thats were pva gets a raw deal . time the makers and suppliers got there heads out of there money bags and took note of what people have done and are still doing thats a mile better than what they can tell you !.

 

I would have done a few tests on smaller items with the waxing methods. It would not have been that hard to make two or three dummy mini panel moulds, treat them the same way as you did the mould, and do a few test layups.

The good thing is, there are probably a dozen ways that will work, - hopefully your layup is one of those.

 

There is only one way so its right !!, cant put it on upside down !!!

 

Very few of the production shops use wax any more, they have almost all converted to semi permanent mold release agents and get from 10 to 30 parts off the mold before needing to do anything to it. PVA is rarely used except on new molds, and even then not that often.

Hull molds are about the only place where wax is still used because semi permanent release agents can be a little too slick for the gel coat to hang on to.

Tub and shower builders all use semi permanent release agents because they build 250 to 500 units per day and cycle the molds many times.