Resin Glitter

Got around to taking a picture of the glittered resin.

Just plain green dye with pink and green glitter in it. The resin to hardener ratios are exactly the same as normal resin.

The portion of the disc above it has the green glitter and a bigger golden flake, but the effect wasnt as good

Resin Colour Testing

Today i had a brainstorm, (oh oh) i looked at a site that had resin being coloured with other than resin pigment. They used acrylic paint.

Well i tried it and it was no good, sorta worked but not very good.
Here is the site i found.
Colour testing

Then i looked up and saw it "soft plastic lure colour". I make soft plastics and i used a colour that goes into the liquid plastic to dye it.

I made up a small batch of resin and put three drops in. It mixed in extremely well and coloured the resin great. Then i thought id try some green and pink fleck sparkles ( fine) again from lure making and guess what , great. The sparkles suspended in the resin and when set it came out like a sparkly gelcoat boat finish.

In the bottles i got there was about 80gms. I see on the net that 100gms cost about $19 Aus from within Aus.
The bottles i have cost $4.99 + postage  Colour
Glitter ( make sure you get the fine stuff) is $5.50 + postage Glitter

I have dealt with this company a bit and they are very helpful, its a family operation in Canberra.
I will be buying a bit of stuff for again i think

Ill put a pic up as soon as the camera is charged.

KBV State Camps

We went to the KBV state championships  this weekend, it was a great setup they had there at St Kilda and if it had not have been for the poor wind conditions it would have been an amazing competition.

I guess around 15 to 20 knots for Saturday and a touch stronger Sunday. But i was great to have a look.

Saturday

getting ready for a heat

gee the gulls get big around here

 

 

junior heat , age 11

Nice

The wind was a bit flukey , at one stage a 17mtr cab didn't like the lack of it and decided to molest a bus. This was just after they saved it. Just a bit earlier it touched up a light pole on the other side of the road.

oops

re launch

 four person heat, it was in two groups

Was great to watch the stuff going on , the crowd got into it a few times and some pretty good jumps happened during this heat.

Sure Can Be dangerous

This week a man got picked up and thumped onto the hard sand at my local beach. Its been long said that it isnt a place for beginers and whether this person was or not it really shows that care that has to be taken when participating in a sport that can be as dangerous as kiting. It also hits home to me that in no way shape or form should you cut corners when getting lessons just to save a few dollars. In the end it could be your own life you save or that of someone elses.
I hope he pulls through.
Kitesurfer fighting for life

Under the Pump - time for a test

So this was the weekend i was to do my first test. All i was waiting on was a piece of perspex for the top to replace the coreflute and off we go. Well again the perspex didn't materialise, again let down by someone else (but hey it's free).
Oh well what to do, i thought nah bugger it im still doing the test. Then the weather kicked in 38deg c one day and the same the next.

My wife went to spotlight to grab some nylon material for the graphics, bought the one we saw the week before. I had all the resin and catalyst, the pump was finished, although no gauge yet and all the glass and plastic had been cut.

Nice bright yellow material in a pirate theme.

I saw a video from foamnfibr on youtube where he used pvc sheet for the top of his board with cotton and no breather or peel ply at all. So with not having that stuff yet i decided this was the way i was going to do it.
 I didn't have a board cut out of foam or ply yet so this test was to see if i could make a top sheet.

So, with a top temp of 38 there was no way on earth i was going to try to do this on Saturday. Sunday morning came and it was around 630 am and about 20 degrees c. Yep its time.

So out to the garage i went and started to set things up. Oh before i go any further i decided to run two vacuum tubes from the table to the pump, why? who knows but here is how i set up the "T" piece. A brass tee with brass nipples. The 6mm tube didn't fit over it , i used some bigger tube, coated the edges with silicone and the same on the smaller tube and pushed it in to each blue tail till it stopped. I tested the seal and it worked great, no leaks anywhere in the whole system.

"T" piece....

I have to say i was very nervous just before i was about to do this. But the one thing that doesn't scare me is fiber glassing. In the past i have re floored boats including mine, made a stitch and glue kayak and other laminated stuff with filler mixes and glue mixes. but every other time i had made stuff i had mixed with my own measurements, not very structured. This time i was going to use the correct amounts. I found a chart on the web whilst searching numerous sites , it shows the correct mix of resin and catalyst per volume. Good stuff.


Catalyst User Guide

I printed this out and used the exact amounts specified on it.
I poured out 250 grams of resin and put 3.8 mls of catalyst in the syringe as specified on the sheet.

scales turned themselves off, 250 grams + 3.8mls = sheet

Ok so here we go.
I laid out the first sheet of glass (cant remember the weight) and proceeded to pour about half the resin on.

glass wetted out....7am...

So i wet the glass out. Above is the first layer wet out. I used an old credit card to do the resin spreading. In the past i have used rollers, foam brushes etc and i found the card especially for this job ( plastic scraper ) to be far and away the best, both for control of the resin and for getting it into the cloth evenly.
I didn't put down a resin layer before the cloth went down. This wasn't about getting a wiz bang finish, it was about getting things ironed out and getting confidant in the processes i would use in the future.
I was pretty happy with the first layer, a lot easier than i expected to be honest. 
In time it is about 20 minutes into the job.

cotton down and glass over the top

So down went the cotton. I used the scraper to spread it out to get rid of any creases ( not a lot of resin wicked through ( hmm a bit dry?). I laid down the last sheet of glass and poured the rest of the resin over it. I used the card again to spread the resin and found that the cotton had soaked up a bit more than i thought. I mixed up another 50grams and added some well measured ( guessed) out catalyst, about 1.5 mls. Geez id never used that little of that in my life. I spread it over the matting and made sure it was all wet. Above is the three layers before the plastic went over the top.

Ok time for the pvc. I rolled it out and realised that i had cut it too short, ahh crap. Oh well , i cut another piece and taped them across the far end. I then proceeded to tape the rest of the plastic down. The tape i used was normal duct tape.
I used some putty i had laying around to seal the tubes in each end and placed a piece of old cloth over each hose inlet under the plastic.

Sealed down, almost.....

The big test was here. I was about 35 to 40 minutes into it, pretty good i reckon for the first time i had done this. The pump started and the pvc began to pull down. I had a leak around each hose  either end. I mucked about and sealed those down without many worries. The close end in the picture really pulled down well so much so that you could see where it edged around the cotton, the other, not so .

plastic pulled down around cotton edge, now that's a seal!!

Where i had joined the two pieces of plastic wasn't air tight, so i fooled around for about 15 minutes and got a good seal, but the far end still had a small leak somewhere that i just could not find. I put a separate patch over it and tried to seal where i heard some air.  But it was pulling down ok so i didn't worry about it too much.

The pump didn't stop at all for roughly 4 hours, i was only going to leave it all on until it cured anyway. I was happy as it was a good test for the pump too.
When i felt the edges that had some built up resin that had hardened , i thought yep that's enough of that. It wasn't going to force down any more than what it had done already. I peeled of the pvc and to my surprise it just came straight off, not tugging or forcing at all. Just a firm pull.

When it came time to lift the sheet from the table i was totally surprised that it lifted of smoothly.

Finished sheet

Well i was pretty happy with this first time effort. The finish is a smooth mat finish with a slight rib pattern in it from the coreflute board.

ooh where did that shine come from

Where i had taped the two pieces of board together had a good shine in places. So when the perspex goes down , i have no doubt this sheet will be like glass. The sheet has a few little pock marks or voids but they are very small. There are no dry areas at all.

Soo, in the end i am very happy with how it turned out. It was a lot easier than i thought it would be to be honest. It took about 1 hour from setup to the final tape up and pump on and sucking.

There are a few things i would do different  next time, but ill leave that for another time and have a bit more of a think. But as a test and first ever time doing this , i would give it a mark of 10/10.
As a finished pre cured top sheet ( well thats what it turned out as) i would give it a 7/10

Cheers
Peter

Table Top - no not dancing

This week i had all the best plans in the world.

I had my resin and matting all ready and i was hoping to be able to find a decent top to put on the table.  But as all things, the best laid plans and all that, yeah right.
I couldn't get the time to find a decent top for the table. I do have a glass sheet from and only coffee table but it wasn't long enough to make a sheet the length i wanted to.

I went to spotlight and found some PVC table cover .02 mm i think , 3m long and 1.2 wide for $17, ok i guess. They also had some cool cotton but it was either get the pvc or the cotton with pretty pictures on it. Because i didn't have the table top yet i decided on the pvc.

Right now funds are a bit tight, more so due to the reasons of buying bigger things so Ive been doing this on a shoe string budget.

A few years back i was flying remote control planes, id made a few SPAD aircraft with coreflute plastic sheet nothing sticks to it unless you flame it and score the surface then use CA glue or contact cement. So id been looking at this for the table top but there seemed to be none around locally, (within 5 kms). A product called Ampelite was an option. It's basically a very up market coreflute but for over $100 per sheet, um nup.

Id looked at bunnings i reckon 5 times in the last two weeks for it and today i found some. I have to thank my gorgeous wife for coming with me and helping (we were also looking at swimming pools). They had alot of 3mm sheet, but it is way to flimsy. But they did also have 5mm sheet but it was short and would need to be joined in the middle. But the perfect width and when joined the perfect length. For $7.50 each , all good.

The join you can see is contact sheet, hmm , not sure that will hold all that well but i guess we will see. I may lay the pvc sheet over it and lay up the glass on that.

Two sheets as bought, no cuts, just needed to be joined. If it works i will get a big sheet and maybe lay over the top.

Now i know this is still a bit flimsy, but it will be ok for the test, it has lines length ways along it so it will be interesting to see the pattern that comes from it. Thing is that if im to make a concave bar in the center underneath it will need to be thin, who knows , it may work.

Other thing i did this week was put the legs on. I have an old trampoline that ripped a while back , i saved all the pipe frame. I used some of this to make the legs.

So that worked well. I cut down the legs and drilled a hole for them to click into the supports. All the mounting brackets are from the old trampoline too, so i didn't have to spend anything on this bit.

So what does that leave now?
Well next week i will have the cotton to use as a colour layer and i should be able to make a test sheet. Hopefully it will be good enough to keep it as a top sheet.

That's all for now.

On with the Pump

Well i finished all the cross bars on the table. Had to re adjust a couple of measurements and re drill the holes, i have no idea how i got them wrong but i did.

Then it was onto the pump.
All i had was the pump itself. I had to search for a vacuum unit from a carby to act as a switch activator. I looked on the net for "proper" vacuum switches, but they cost far more than a proper vacuum pump would anyway.

I ended finding one at my local mechanics ( he services my cars, an honest one too). It was from an old corolla distributor. Only worry was that the diaphragm was perished. So i grabbed it anyway, hey it was free!

I got it home and had a bit of a look. Well i ended up grinding off the lip, taking out the perished rubber and cutting a new one from some old regulators from years ago. Put in a bolt through the middle with a couple of washers and poked it out the back , siliconed it together , let it dry and mounted it. Only thing i am unsure of is whether the rubber is strong enough when the vac is turned on. I have thicker rubber so if it isn't i will rebuild it again.

 

Setting up the pump

I have set up the rebuilt advance unit with the spring tensioner plus the micro switch which will be wired in the normally closed position. I'm also setting up the junction box where the wires will be run into for the mains, switch and pump.

I finished the pump wired it up and ran it for a bit to see if the rebuilt vac switch worked , it did. I just need to get myself a gauge and run it properly to see if the diaphram works properly and it sucks the vac bag correctly.

I am hopeing to make a top sheet this weekend, some cotton would be nice to try it with . I guess a trip to the local spotlight store will be on.