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I’m sanding the shell right now, and I have what I believe to be a good deal of orange peel or roughness in the epoxy after applying 4-5 coats or so. Is this what I should expect, and I just accept that I will be sanding until it’s level, or should I sand part of the thickness and apply more epoxy to fill and level it, and sand again when that cures?
I also have some visible marks from where I drilled through the fiberglass to inject epoxy to take care of bubbles; I’m worried I’ll have to grind those areas away and re-fill then to make them less visible.
Since no one with more experience has replied yet, I give you my two cents:
In case you just fill the “valleys” with more epoxy, you could risk having a poor bond between the previous coats and the fill, and end up with the task to sand all of it down again… I had to do it to the full camper exterior, and it is no fun at all. So I advocate for sanding the current coats level first, and then put on a final coat of epoxy.
For the second issue: if you intend to apply varnish, it will be visible. If this might bother you: better invest the time to fix it. I for myself sanded through the fibreglass on several occasions at the side panels and will have to patch those anyway…
So heads up, you’re not the only one with a bit of struggle 🙂
Not sure if you have tried this but I tip the epoxy with a foam sponge after applied with a roller. I thought it was just final coat but it save you a great deal of sanding base coats as well.
Bill
I am keen to know how did you get on? Would be great to see any photos. I have started sanding back the epoxy after only 2 coats to fill the weave. I am getting some orange peel in places but not an excessive amount. Noting I only have 2 layers of epoxy between the cloth and the sander I am reluctant to obsess on the areas of orange peel.
Not much progress in the last few weeks, but from the feedback here and the response I received from CLC when I asked them, I’m planning to continue sanding until I’m through all the irregularities and then add more epoxy to ensure complete coverage.
They ship the kit with lv (low viscosity) epoxy to make it easier to saturate the glass weave. The trade off is at higher temperatures it tends to fish eye and orange peel on the flat panels or second and third buildups. I ordered Mass epoxies flag resin and it helped considerably. If you used other brands of epoxy you will appreciate what a really great quality the Mass products are. One thing I did notice is probably due to the different viscosity the 2:1 pumps with the kits tend to dispense more hardener than resin. The ratio is close enough that it hardens fine however when you get the the end of the gallons you will find you will run short on hardener. I just purchased an extra pint and was good. Of course for the larger layups you want to measure your epoxy with a digital scale and never mix up more than 12 oz at a time or it will cure way to fast. On my larger layup for the outside of the tear drop I had 12 batches pre-measured in Dixie cups and a dedicated person to mix as me and 2 other people applied and spread. this was what I considered the sweet spot of manpower for the layup and it took us 1 1/2 hours to complete it. It would have been a perfect layup had not the temperature rising from 70 degrees at the start and rising to about 80 by noon, the epoxy off-gassed seriously and I had numerous bubbles in my otherwise perfect layup. Oh well live and learn, I could point out at least a dozen mistake a casual observer would never see, ahh the joy of diy.
Bill
Bill
Interesting point about the temperature – I did the layup in mid June, and I’m in Indiana, so that probably explains all the bubbles appearing out of nowhere that I couldn’t previously understand. It looked great when I was wetting out the glass, and I was pretty surprised when I came back the next day to a bunch of little bubbles.
Searching online, I found that using a razor blade as a scraper to bring down epoxy/varnish runs is very effective. I can confirm this. Just hold the blade slightly less then perpendicular to the surface you’re scraping, Use this method to break down the high spots, then follow up with your sander to make it all flush.
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