This is the third part of the tips and tricks selection to manage easily your epoxy works , here we will talk about using thickened resin to make bondings and the so called “liquid joinery” that is to say make thickened resin radiuses to strengthen joints
- Bonding with thickened resin : it is a quite straightforward work: you mix the resin, add the thickening powder , mix , put the bonding compound on the area with a spatula or a trussel , put the parts in position and clamp them or fasten them with screws until the resin sets; just few tips:
- remove the resin flowing out of the parts immediately
- wet or not wet the parts with liquid resin before gluing them: this is a controversial subject, some says the dry plywood tends to absorb resin making the joint somehow poor of it; I never personally experienced this fact directly, but I think giving a quick layer of liquid resin before gluing “dry” plywood parts it is anyway a good practice
- mark the bonding area with a pencil on both parts to make sure you fill it with resin and you do not pour resin out of the desired area
- a super pressure while the resin set is not required, on the opposite side, you would better avoid to squeeze all the resin out of the joint, it is better a “not perfect” joint with a little bit of air inside to keep a veil of resin within the joint once it has set
- for this reason avoid to fair the parts too much, their surface have to be rough enough to retain the good amount of resin in the joint ; a grade 60 sandapaper is enough
- resin radiuses: they are required to strengthen joints, you will do a lot of them , so you will gain soon a good practice, here I give just few basic tips:
- the right thickened resin density is the key : the radiuses have to stay where you make them without flowing away, even on vertical faces
- a disposable pastry chef bag is a good tool to pour the right amount of resin in the joint area
- use properly sized circular object, a cap, a coin , a mid sized washer , to pull the resin and obtain a clean radius , don’t use the fingers except for very short radiuses
- use a small spatula to clean the resin out of the radius
- pull the radiuses in a single shot
- if you have to laminate on the radiuses (we’ll talk about it in the next chapter) , wet all the lamination+radius area with liquid resin ; the general rule is : try to work always “wet on wet” completing a single area ; working “by areas” is much better than working “by layers” : that means complete an area with all the resin works (bonding , radiuses and glasstaping) is by far more efficient than coplete all the radiuses on the hull and THEN make all the glass taping works , since this last solutions will force to sand all the radiuses or use a big amount of peelply before laminating the glass tape
you can find the next episode here
few pictures: a set of plastic spatulas , purchase a couple of them they are super useful to press the resin into glass fabric pre-soaking it (we will see in the next chapter) , a couple of typical resin radiuses, the pastry bag in action; it is quite useful not only for radius works but for all the works where a neat and clean positioning of a glue string is required (gluing the planks in a stripp planked construction like idea 19 and idea 850 for example)
