ok, i am convinced. several of you touted my plans to do the fillets on the keel with bondo and insisted that i use thickened epoxy. so i used epoxy thickened with wood flower. i can't believe how fast i got the job done! it took a fraction of the time to apply the goo compared to how long it took to apply bondo on my weekender a few years ago. i am not looking forward to sanding it but it sure went on fast.
i am left to wonder..... perhaps i should smooth the glass cloth with epoxy when i am getting ready to paint.
i was going to mix my epoxy with baby powder instead of wood flower but i just could not believe that i understood correctly when someone on this site said something about using talc to mix instead of wood powder. does that really work or was my leg being pulled? :oops:
so it is official. i won't be using bondo for my fillets any more. it was less of a mess too!
That was me Aaron. Talic works good for fillets or anything that needs a thicker mixture. Don't sand bad either. Wood flour is like sanding stone. Mix up a bit with talic and go over the work and seen how nice it comes out. You can also add a strip of fiberglass to the talic mix. Don't get the talic too thick or it is weaker.
thanx for the tip. i bought some baby powder for the job and chickened out. i will try it though. i have sanded wood flower epoxy before.... it ain't no walk in the park for sure.
i finally found a set of neoprene measuring cups. someone else recomended them a while ago and i have had a devil of a time finding one but my wife spotted a set a few weeks ago and i am here to tell ya. ThOse SucKerS arE GRRREAT!! you can't get the epoxy to stick to those cups if you wanted to. they are supposed to be able to handle temps of up to 500 degrees. epoxy gets hot enough to melt plastic when it kicks but i don't think i will ever get a mix that hot. :twisted:
how much talk is too much? bread dough consistancy? i emagine i don't want it too thin with talk either, right? i tried to find something that did not contain perfumes and aloes but was not able to. my boat is not going to smell like sweet pea is it? i don't want people calling it the gerber boat. :lol: the red aaron is supposed to be the terror of the seven seas, after all.
is about the limit Aaron. Any more and it is too dry to mix well. It smells better than epoxy according to Sara. Expirement on some small thing to get the hand of it. For small jobs I use the bathroon dixie cups with a 2:1 mis it is easy to mark the cup for and teaspoon or two batch. This mixed with thte talic yields about on oz of thick mixture. This is really great for gap filling on glue ups. 8)
I use small plastic, throw away, glasses for mixing epoxy if its a good size batch. They have grooves in the sides so they give you an option of a full glass, approximately 2/3 and approximately 1/3. Mixed 2:1 a full glass gives me about as much epoxy as I like to work with at one time.
For most jobs I only use the 1/3 set of lines. This is for measuring. For mixing I pour the measured resin and hardner into a childs paper cereal bowl. I mix the liquid/clear epoxy for a minute then start adding in silica and then either wood flower, micro ballons or graphite depending on what I am doing. I have never had trouble sanding the silica wood flower mixes but I use 40 grit with a random orbital sander for most low level sanding. For bondoing I used silica and microballons and 120 drit sand paper on the flat board or at times a flat palm sander.
For very small applications I use a plastic measuring spoon, the tbls size, and just do two resins and one hardener, I wipe the measuring spoon clean between resin and hardener measuring and then after all measuring so it willbe ready for the next time.