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I put 3 inch fiberglass tape on the joints and have run into some issues. I have several places where the glass is not clear and it looks like the fabric is "floated", at least that's what a helpfull website called it. My question is what should I do about it. I know more now than I did before I started. It seems that I may have put too much epoxy on. Anyway, should I sand those spots down to wood and patch? Should I put the second coat on? or am I screwed and just move on?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Eric
7 replies:
RE: Fiberglassing
I don't think it's quite a bubble. What I read was that if I put too much epoxy on the epoxy would go between the fabric and wood instead of being flush with the wood. Yes it's in the cockpit.
Eric
RE: Fiberglassing
Just to clarify-
Did you lay down the tape first and now the cloth (on top) seems to be "floating," or is it the tape that seems to be floating from the wood substrate?
Patrick
RE: Fiberglassing
No, it's fillet then tape then epoxy. Float might not be the right word, it's just from one article. Most of the tape is clear but there are small areas that are nit.
Eric
RE: Fiberglassing
If the glass is white instead of clear, it hasn't been properly wet out. Either some kind of contamination prevented the glass from absorbing the epoxy, the epoxy had cured enough that it had lost its viscosity (was no longer a free-flowing liquid) or you just missed a spot.
Floating is where there is too much resin. It's like a clear solid bubble of epoxy where the glass doesn't touch the underkying surface.
Sometimes you can have both, especially if you use a big glob of gelling epoxy to try and wet out a starved area, but usually it's one or the other.
If you have a few small white spots scattered all over the tape with no air bubbles underneath, that is usually only an aesthetic problem. It's OK to ignore if you're painting. If there are air bubbles, lots of white areas and.or they're concentrated near one spat, they need to be fixed.
Laszlo
RE: Fiberglassing
Thanks for the advice. I'll have to wait for warmer weather to go any further.
Eric
RE: Fiberglassing
Thick tape can be tricky to wet out nicely. I've had good luck with rolling the tape loosly, saturating the roll in a container of epoxy, and then placing it wet. Perhaps counterintuitively, this seems to use less epoxy than when placing the tape dry and trying to wet it out in place.
It's nice, too, to bed tape into a still wet fillet, but this can be tricky to choreograph, depending.
Good luck,
Patrick
RE: Fiberglassing
» Submitted by Grumpy - Thu, 11/9/17 » 11:19 AM
"Floated" ................. you mean like a bubble? Like you didn't roll out the air/epoxy? What is behind the float, air or epoxy? Is it a visable area?