Epoxy Repellent

Last night I taped off the long board. Today I prepped the board with clear acrylic paint. Then I mixed up a small batch of dark deep blue epoxy. I added a little Additive F to the mix. The art brush that I used shed its bristles like a big dog on a hot sprint day. The blue wasn’t deep and dark enough to cover the cut lap colors well either. I also noted that the board seemed to repel the epoxy. So I wiped the pin line clean, I washed the pinline with isopropyl alcohol, I trimmed a foam brush back and mixed up a batch of black pigmented epoxy.

The foam brush worked fine but the board seemed to repel the epoxy. So again I wiped the board clean. I read that first coating the pin line with acrylic pain was a good way to prevent the pin line from creeping under the masking tape.

What did I do wrong? Any suggestions?
Epoxy Repellent?


The result

Ed, if I'm not mistaken, the Minwax Polycrylic contains a water based Polyurethane, not the same as the acrylic that folks recommend...and requires 30 days to fully cure. My quess is that if the Polycrylic was present with each cleaning that was your problem.

I also use DNA to wipe down, the ISO Alky contains water and that always causes me problems.

You'll have to let us know what the Swaylockers say.

bummer dude.i truly feel your pain..the good news is you wont ever make that mistake again..cant tell you how many times i messed up the order or the mix and had to sand off killer paint jobs and start over.me gunna save ya a ton of pain.,i use waterbased krylon acrylic indoor plasticote(means its safe around the kiddies).after it completely cures(1day)i use a fine mist of the krylon plasticote clear.when it hardens it keeps the colors from running when i apply the hotcoat.pull your tape just before it has totally cured and that tape line will turn round and save ya a bunch of finish sanding.

I've pulled the tape and sanded the polyacrylic off of the board. I re-taped the cut lap. Then I laid out row after row of one inch tape. I drew the nose art over the tape.

Then I build a pin line cutting tool from a pair of razor blades, a pair of washers, and some tape. I used this tool to cut uniform thin lines over the pattern that I drew.

The tool worked fairly well. I had to retrace one of the two razor blades with a single blade.

Re-taped


Fully taped nose


Parts for the pin line tool


The pin line tool


Drawn art


Cut pin line

Ed - how's the board coming along?

I’ve been out on business travel and I’ve had other obligations that I’ve had to spend time on. The problem, as Jeff pointed out, was the type of acrylic that I chose.

I did apply epoxy this afternoon. The results are again a mixed bag. I thought that I had read on Sway’s that if you were using epoxy resin then you didn’t need to put down a clear. That was wrong. The epoxy bled through the tape.

After the epoxy cures-hard I think I can clean the bleed through up with a razor blade. It will be a lot scratching but I think that’s where I’m going.

The whole Thing


I like how the design came out


The bleed through at the tape seams was predicable. This should be easy to clean up with a razor blade.


The big pin line seemed to bleed more than the nose art.

Here's the board after a cleaning up with a razor blade. It took me maybe 4 hours to do the clean up.

I used plastic tea spoons to measure the epoxy that I used. The pin line epoxy is still a little soft. I must have gone a little light on the catalyst. The fat pin line needs a little sanding. I'll have wait a bit until the epoxy firms up a little.

Before I can put on the gloss coat I’ll have to wait for a relatively warm Ohio January day. I can get good working temperatures in the garage with the kerosene heater when the out side temps are around 40 F. We haven’t seen that in a while.

Ed, that long board looks great. I take it you are going to be the first wakesurfer to Hang-10! That's what it look's like it wants to do, and I bet it is possible once you get the BIG fin on.

I like the fact that it is long and narrow and plenty of float. It should be fast (for a long board).

You may want to do an extra top coat than you were planning. The surfboards I made were all very fragile (and I used epoxy not resin throughout). They were fragile because the last step should be an oven bake to really set up the epoxy. Your other enemy is the cold weather and working by propane in a garage, the room temperature should be stable and warm.

Jim, I have two layers of glass on the top.

The gods of surfboard construction just spat at me. I went to smooth out and sand the "pin line" but had problems. After three days of curing it has the hardness of tar. I stripped of the outer pin line and hop to salvage the design.

Dang it!