Sounds like a well thought and executed plan. Answers to your last questions:
1. Leave it clamped for a minimum of 24 hours at that temp.
2. Since it's roughly 10 hours from the time you did the repair you might have wanted to clean up a few hours ago. However, the tape you mentioned which didn't stick too well will help you in the clean up.
3. Some will say yes but I've never had a joint fail if I didn't precoat. Your repair should be fine
George K
I pulled off the tape during my lunch break. I'm not sure the tape was a win. On one side the extruded epoxy formed what would have been a beautiful little fillet against the beam. However, once I pulled out the tape, I am left with a thin gap under the fillet.
The clamp also leaves me in a bit of a catch-22 situation. I want to cleanup the excess, including that hanging fillet before the epoxy fully hardens. Until I remove the clamp, I don't have much access to cleanup the excess. However, until the epoxy pretty much fully hardens, I don't want to remove the clamp.
Any suggestions on how to remove my hanging fillet? My current best idea is to simply go at it with a sharp chisel, and try not to slip too often. Any better ideas are very welcome.
Bill
I ended up removing my big clamp long enough to attack the excess epoxy with some chisels and knives. It was like wax drippings that have not quite become brittle, but the epoxy was much tougher than wax. The results seem pretty good. A few minor scrapes from the chisels that I'll want to "paint" later, but I'm optimistic the repair should hold, and since it is inside the boat, it is certainly not very visible!
For good measure, I reinstalled my clamp to support the repair while it continues to cure. Now I plan to just leave it sit for a few days.
Questions:
1) How long should I have waited before trying to cleanup my spills?
2) What are the ratios when mixing MAS resin with MAS slow hardener by weight?
thanks,
Bill
Bill,
Sounds like you waited long enough to clean up the spills and it won't hurt to leave the clamp on a bit longer. As far as how much epoxy/hardner by weight, you'd have to know the specific gravity of each to know for sure but I suspect they're close enough to being the same a two to one mix would work just fine. You can always contact the guys at MAS, they're always helpful.
George K
What George said about the ratios.
Another way is to pump out a batch and weigh each part, once you have occasion to use a full batch. I did this and wrote the percentage on the bottle with permanent marker. I think for my particular epoxy it was hardener = 43% of the weight of the resin, but don't quote me.
Some Excel-skilled folks here prefer to keep a computer-printed chart of the weights needed by many different batch sizes on their workbench.
By the 'weigh', I recently replaced my expired epoxy scale with a My Weigh MX-500, ordered off the web. Fantastic price and I love it so far. 500 g max, 0.1g precision. Easy-to-read display with button-activated backlight, easy-to-use top-mounted controls, uses standard batteries.
Old scale was smaller. Very hard to see display, hard to use the front-mounted buttons without spilling the epoxy or getting some on the scale. It would power off very quickly, before I could pour the second part, ruining the batch. Used expensive harder-to-find button batteries.
If anyone's looking to buy an epoxy scale, make sure you get at least 0.1g precision.
(but most folks here prefer to measure by volume, and you can find handy tips on that method in the archive).