Reply To: Glassing the shell

#295
Eric
Participant

The yellow plastic squeegee is sold in autoparts supply stores for spreading Bondo. They plastic,flexible, about 4″x3″.  Cured epoxy can be removed from them by flexing them and shaving it off with a utility knife blade. You can make all sorts of fillet tools out of them; far better than sticks and infinitely reusable (lie for 25 years of boatbuilding.  I am still using the same batch of squeegees I purchased in 1990.  Even devotees of foam rollers and boatbuilding will admit that squeegees, bar none, are the single best way to wet out glass on surfaces.  I assure you they are the best way also to wet out glass tape on a plastic covered table prior to unrolling the tape in place on the boat (or teardrop. Applying downward pressure while moving the squeegee is THE way to get the air out of the fiberglass. Stippling motions with a chip brush are childsplay in comparison. What roller devotees like about rollers is that they spread out the epoxy quickly in a smooth thin even coat.  However they entrain air and are far from ideal in wetting out dry cloth on dry wood. If you use then you must still get the air out- using a squeegee aggressively; simply tipping with a foam brush just doesn’t cut it/isn’t aggressive enough/ leaves glass floating on epoxy.  I have no trouble spreading epoxy out evenly, thinly, and quickly with squeegees.  At first its like plowing snow in a parking lot, then its a wiping motion with downward pressure, then its a scrubbing action with more downward pressure until you get a uniform translucent textured glass surface with no epoxy pools on the surface. Look at the surface at an angle to see those shiny reflecting pools and go back and squegee them with downward pressure  towards the still unwet glass. The one function where rollers excel is applying thin final epoxy coats to already cured wet out vertical or overhead surfaces – but at great expense in wasted epoxy and expensive nonreusable rollers. And if it is a lengthy job the stuff starts to cure n the roller and in the pan.  Ultimately the for peels of the cardboard roller and or leaves “tracks” in your job where the for seams were in the roller.  The tampon style rollers available at Lowest are a partial answer to this issue. All that said,  I have refined my squeegee skills to do even these jobs, even overhead!