BYYB Forums

it all started about two weeks ago, i put the second coat of epoxy on the inside of the hull. as of this Sunday, two weeks to the day it was still tacky. i am sure that the mix was correct on each batch and it still had not hardened fully. i discussed this with barnacle jim who had the same problem earlier, and he was right.

what i did was use west fast hardener and just put it on top of the tacky coat. i came back less than 3 hours later to a fully hardened coat of epoxy, so i did yet another coat and the same results.

now i am kicking myself for not having done it sooner, i could have saved myself a bunch of time while i was waiting for the slow coat to harden. i would have been done with the epoxy by now.

the first coat was with RAKA and the only reason the subsiquent coats were WEST is because i didn't want to wait any longer for mail order. i will continue to finish up with what i have.

but if this should happen to you, give it a try... it worked for me.

now to finish it up and move on to the seats and daggerboard box.

Yikes Bill.... this does not sound good. That happened to me, I did the same thing of putting a "top coat" on it and pressing onward. Worked great for a year or so and then large bubbles developed under the top coat and paint. Guess it was where the epoxy was still off gassing. Had to take it all off and redo the whole thing--- it was a mell of a hess!

that does sound like a mess. i guess i know what to look forward to

thank you for letting me know Angie

I once had a batch of epoxy not harden and I just scraped it off and redid it. It was what my reading on the subject suggested be done and I believe there was some sort of dire warning about trying to fix the problem by adding more epoxy or hardener.

It was a bit of work scraping of the uncured batch, but I have had no problems with than area since.

Hi Bill,

Whether or not problems lie just off the horizon, I cannot really say. Chemistry is a rather complex matter with a lot of variables. You might say it is as changing as the sea itself.

I think we're going to be OK, though Bill. Nothing dire has happened with my epoxy overcoat, and it's been months, and the temperature has been hot, very hot. Bill, I know you live in Arizona, but you can't imagine just how hot Glendale, Arizona, can get in the summertime.

I can honestly tell you, Bill, there have no problems with the boat leaking either. (Of course, we haven't really launched the boat yet, but please disregard irrelevant details like that.)

Honestly, I think everything will be fine. (I did speak with one or two people and they didn't seem especially worried, but then again, the boat is not their boat. Even so, I'm not worried, and here's why— the temperatures have been over 110 degrees, and everything still looks stable. Maybe if I had held a heat gun over the area, the temperature might have risen to a degree or two higher, but if the reaction remains stable at 110 degrees, it's probably OK.

I must tell you that today I sanded on some of those suspicous soft areas. I can absolutely tell you, Bill, that the epoxy rudely tore the sandpaper out of my hand, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it. The epoxy laughed me to scorn, but then, so do a lot of people.

It felt good, working on the boat again. Indeed, Miss Pat had said, "You need to go out and work on your boat." Well, I did as she said. Believe me, I'm not going to argue with Miss Pat.

No argue huh. No guts no Air Medals Jim :lol: