[Paddlewise] The Epoxy Experience

After aggravating the roofers for a while, they finally went home
complaining it was too hot.  And this, after I provided hose and water so
they could wet the shingles down so they could walk on them.  How hot could
it be up there, 90 - 100 - 110?  Geeze, it's only June.  What are they gonna
do when summer gets here?  They're going to tick the neighbors off again by
showing up at 7am again tomorrow.

So I get the epoxy kit (http://www.systemthree.com/index.html) suggested by
that chemist guy and others to see if I could put some keel strips on
without gluing myself to a tree.

I'm mechanically challenged and had been looking at the kit with great
trepidation since I got it.  I had read the huge manual (at least 75 pages)
and can proudly say I didn't understand a word of it.  There was all kinds
of stuff in the kit.  I recognized a paint brush and some popcycle sticks.
Oh yeah, there were plastic shot glasses with weird measurement lines on
them.  Also some paper cup things with other markings.  There's other
strange stuff like plastic fiber, wood flour, some thickener stuff,
microballons and little sissy gloves like a proctologist might use.

I took the 2foot by 2foot piece of fiberglass cloth and cut a few 2 inch
strips.  The first lesson I learned was not to pull a piece of loose
fiberglass string; the whole thing starts to unravel.

Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, I'm making keel strips.  I'm old and tired and
lazy and drag the kayak around on the stern keel and it's worn through the
gel coat.  I also like to paddle like hell into a landing and beach the
kayak on rocks and stuff so the bow keel is a mite worn also.

Anyway, I sanded both sides of the stern keel.  How much did I sand?  Enough
so there was some dust generated.   I didn't want to do a Tim Allen and sand
through the hull.

I then grab one of those shot glass things with the funny markings, poor
some stuff from a big bottle with no label and more or less half that amount
from a smaller bottle that had # 1 something on it and stirred it together
with one of  those popcycle stick things.

I had bought a few of those tiny foam rubber disposable paint brushes and
slapped some of the goo on the 2 foot worn stern keel, laid a strip of
fiberglass on and slapped some more goo on top of that.  I kept smearing it
around until the fiberglass was pretty transparent.  I started at the top of
the keel and brushed downward which helped loosen the fiberglass threads
even more.  Dunno how I could've gotten around that problem.

This whole process took a couple of minutes and when I reached over to pick
up the shot glass, it was really hot.  I looked up at the sun and thought
maybe the roofers weren't such sissies after all.  Then I looked at the shot
glass again and it was smoking.  On a previous Paddlewise discussion someone
mentioned a smoking pot and I thought it was an old guy making inappropriate
comments about the 70's.  Guess maybe he was talking about these chemicals.

When I tried to brush some more of the goo it was hard, as was the paint
brush so I threw it away and started over with a new brush and some new goo.
This time I worked a little faster.  I put three layers of fiberglass on the
stern and bow keel areas.  A little goo dribbled down the hull but I just
wiped it off with a rag.  Tomorrow I'll cut off some of the stray threads
and see if I can sand it down smooth.

This first experience was rather interesting.  Oh yeah, I didn't use those
proctologist gloves.  I now have very clean, very smooth fingertips.  I
can't see my fingerprints and figure I'm ready for a new career in the field
of criminal malfeasance.

Oh well, tomorrow is another glorious day of painting and roofing.  But my
day is coming, soon.

Clyde Sisler
http://csisler.com




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