Re: Agh! Spreader stick s

Posted by Laszlo on Sep 7, 2004

Epoxy is the perfect garage floor protectant. It'll bond together all those nasty cracks and prevent water seepage.

As far as getting the stick out, what the others have written will take care of it just fine, and probably faster than it takes to write and read all these posts.

One suggestion for the future - you can make very nice epoxy-rich joints and not have to worry about starved joints by just simply precoating the surfaces that need to be bonded with unthickened epoxy.

On scarf and butt joints, just paint on a thin layer and then apply the thickened stuff. You can even let it cure to tacky or just beyond with no problems.

For lapstrake, you would have to apply the unthickened epoxy before stitching and let it cure beyond tacky. But as long as you're quick with the stitching and put on the rest of the epoxy within a day or so, you should be fine.

Alternatively, if speed is a problem, let it cure for a week or two and then lightly sand the precoated areas to clean them and roughen them up for a good mechanical bond.

Some builders may shy away from this technique for 2 reasons - this results in a mechanical bond, rather than a chemical one and fears about the wood being too hard to bend once it's been epoxied.

They're probably right about the bond type, but I once bonded 2 pieces of wood that I had precoated a few weeks before, let the joint cure for a couple of weeks, put it into a vise and whacked it with a hammer. The wood broke, not the epoxy joint. That's good enough for me, even if it's not the greates ultimate strength.

And I've never had any problem bending wood that had just a single, thin sealing coat of epoxy.

Welcome to the club.

Laszlo

PS - If you run the edge of a board or plywood sheet over the floor like a squeegee, it makes the epoxy spread out and look deliberate :-)

In Response to: Agh! Spreader stick stuck by Michelle Moran on Sep 6, 2004

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