OK, so I've got 'this friend' you see, and he purchased some additional epoxy and - to cut a long story short, the silly bugger mixed up a 2;1 ratio epoxy as a 5:1!!!! What a goose! It was a final coat over an already well set and sanded double bias layer on the outside of the hull. Now his question is...will it eventually go off anyway but just take days? My 'friend' would love to hear any thoughts!
Cheers
Gerrard: Get a few gallons of vinegar and a wheelbarrow full of paper towels and tell your "friend" to use them to get all the goo off. It's not going to cure.
Dave
Greeting Gerrard,
(02-10-2013, 02:10 AM)Gerrard OLeary link Wrote: [ -> ]...will it eventually go off anyway but just take days?
Cheers
The short answer is ...
NO.
The medium answer is epoxy curing is a chemical reaction. If you mixed it wrong, it cannot work - ever.
The record for waiting is 7 years:
Read topic 1580.
Don't fret. Your "friend" is in fine company, as it has happened before. Read all of these topics (
2636,
3043,
1440,
339), and you will (1) feel better that your friend is human like the rest of us, and (2) will be able to tell your friend exactly what he needs to do to fix the problem.
;D
Cheers,
Tom
Yell your "friend" that all the screwed up goo has to come off. Once you're at this stage, you can start again, re-prep the surface and apply a correctly mixed batch. The higher the resin/hardener ratio, the more sensitive to ratio correctness you must be. A 1:1 mix can be off by as much as 15%, but a 2:1 mix less than 10%, 3:1 less than 5%, and 4 or 5:1 better be pretty darn close. Most epoxies can tolerate a good bit of imbalance, but the physical properties of the cured goo will be affected, depending on which is too little in the mix and the percentage error.
Scrape and cuss. Repeat this process with vinegar and solvents, just to improve your ability to invent new and much more descriptive self degradation and colorful metaphors for your lack of ratio diligence (
). It's a lesson you (okay your friend) had to learn.
Thanks friends! OK, it was me! I can take it...I shall get buersy with my pennance! Thanks.
Gerrard: I've been there myself. I made the same mistake.
Dave
Admission is the first stage of recovery Dave. If you live in a large, typically coastal area, there's a 12 step program to help deal with these troubles.
Could be worse. I waited 4 days for a batch to go off, only to find I had mixed one part hardener and two parts... hardener.Â