Epoxy day, or one of them at least. Having got up, fed the cats, most important, and done my ablutions, it was time to get started.
Firstly, I needed to tape over the holes in the work pieces, something that I forgot about yesterday. that didn’t take long.
I mixed up eight pumps of resin and hardener and used the mechanical stirrer to mix it up for around two minutes. This new arrangement is much easier than stirring my hand using a mixing stick.
I poured half on one piece and the rest on the other as soon as it was mixed since keeping the epoxy in the mixing cup too long will cause it to kick off and start solidifying, sometimes with enough heat to melt the plastic. Yes, I’ve had that happen in the past. It’s very messy!!
Using a plastic spreader I coated each piece with the epoxy and used a brush to make sure that the plywood was evenly covered.
I put the four registration pins into what will be the bottom piece when clamped and made sure that the holes in the other piece were clear of epoxy. That’s it for now.
It is quite cold again today and we don’t have heating in the workroom as it isn’t used much, so I dragged one of out portable Butane gas heaters in to the room and set that going. That should raise the temperature enough to shorten the cure time.
For now it’s time to make breakfast and..
…have a cup of tea.
This is how it sounds and what it looks like. A little intrusive, but not too much. Mind you, the cats hate it!
After 5 hours of continuous use, the vacuum pump was getting a little too hot for comfort, so I turned it off, removed the plastic and inspected the epoxy. It has kicked off but is not hard. It is, however, sufficiently cured for there to be little chance of the two laminates coming apart, but just to be on the safe side I put some weights on the top. Each of those is 2 kg, which should do the trick.
I’ll leave it like that until the epoxy has hardened properly and then look at taking the tape off and cleaning up the squeeze-out.
Time for a cup of tea.