quahog

Hi fellas this is a question for the fiberglass experts in the crowd. I recently did some small glass repairs on a 67 I'm working on , when I made the mix I weighed the resin and added the hardner in the appropriate amount. Unfortunatly the scale I used was not accurate and the mix has never hardned,after a week and a half, now what. How can I remove this mess, never had this problem before and at a loss as what to do.Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance Jeff

John S 1961

see dub at the paint and body forum

but me i would scrape it off and clean with acetone or lacquer thinner. suggest some sample trials to get the mix spot on

FFBillysCor

Hello Jeff ; Whereon the car and how big is the repair ? If it has not hardened by now it probably will not and will need to be redone. The beauty of Fiberglass is that you can always remove and re-do, depending upon temperature. Ambient temperature is one of the most important influences you must be aware of, hot temps will give little time to work but cooler temps a bit more for fine tuning your repair. I do not recommend weighing your resin and hardener, go by percentages instead. Get some inexpensive kitchen measuring scoops and use water to get an idea of how much resin you need to use. Use disposable plastic containers (like Chinese food) to mix resin and the recommended drops of hardener, mix with a disposable brush that you will also use to wet surface and glass mat. Don't be afraid to remove any repair you are not happy with, as you do more you will get better and do it right. Best...

project63

Even a weak mix of hardner will kick in a day or two. As mentioned, you measure in drops per oz. of resin and I doubt if your scale is that accurate

How old is your material? If the hardner is more than 6 months old, it is no good. Putty knife the repair off the car, clean with acetone and start over with fresh resin and new hardner.

tc

pop23235

After a week and a half, you likely need to solvent remove and start over. If you experience slow hardening, you can add heat - something like a small space heater (electric) and kick sometimes.

DansYellow66

then grind/sand the area moderately and re-apply. You could first try putting a heat lamp on it for an hour or so but if it didn't make any pretenses of kicking off after 1-1/2 weeks it's not likely to help now. Just not enough hardner in it.

Frankie the Fink

I've always used a golf ball size of resin with a pea sized dab of hardener - but then I'm always doing small, piddly repairs. That combo has never failed me however...

csherman

if it has not hardened - it will need removed
resin to MEKP - I use about 10 drops per ounce
again it is a guesstimate.
Question - how old is the hardener and resin - that can have an impact

ChattanoogaJSB

I'm not an expert, but the old guy who taught me basic repairs was/is excellent. I typically add a few extra drops and have never had any trouble...for instance if it calls for 10, I might add 12. Your mix will feel just slightly warm in your hand if you have it in a thin plastic container. Not hot, as you might suppose, but warm.

C1-Curt

Good luck getting the old stuff off, acetone will normally break down unhardened resin but I have no idea what that would do to the fiberglass so test it first.

After you get the old stuff off I would suggest using http://www.westsystem.com/

The beauty of this system is you can buy the optional can pumps for the resin and one for the hardener then hit one pump of each and it is a perfect mix every time.

quahog

Thanks for all the replys ,I have lacquer thinner and acetone, so my next move is to remove what I've done and go forward. I have the west system with the pumps but I wasn't using it for this job. The repairs are quite small but there are 3 of them.I just don't want this to bite me late with bleed thru. Thanks for all your replies . Jeff

Dave Tracy

I would recommend acetone over lacquer thinner. The lacquer thinner usually has other solvents in it that can contaminate the glass. This is the info I read on the Paint and Body forum. Also, the resin is soluble and can be thinned with acetone. My $.02

mrg

10-15 drops of hardener per ounce of resin has worked for me, also.

DansYellow66

I will second (or third) acetone for clean up also. But, don't let it anywhere near your resin and tools when applying fiberglass resin and mat. I will contaminate uncured resin and prevent it from curing and becoming stable.

TCracingCA

I would tear a piece of cardboard from a box-- the size of cardboard would depend on the size of the needed repair. First just to get my mixture ratios down, I always had/have an old surfboard with a ding laying around and I would drop the hardener in and stir it in-- I kind of felt the consistency change in the full puddle or maybe not enough in the outskirts of the puddle and did a few more drops of hardener and continued to stir and it was a feel that I got used to as to when it was ready to apply. Then I would get comparable sized puddles going and number of drops that were successful and continue on, if needing more mix. The only time I ever did ratios was if I was filling up a trough, to dip entire strips!

Ya what you did there, has to be completely cleaned off.

PS Corvette Fiberglass Resin application starter kit-- key component. Before moving on up to the big time!