Poor man's oven. In the vac bag outside. Then cover with garbage bags. It's not that hot here 15? C but you can really feel the heat.
I bet if you did it on a hot day it would get pretty hot.

53?C. 1100 hrs. Should get up to 60 after lunch I think. Imagine this on a hot day.
If you heat epoxy to over 60? it makes a big difference in strength.

Is that kind of tissue is taking in a lot of resin? Then, Is the bagging it reduce the resin quantity a lot? How much resin did you use for one lay? And the last question is did you seal the EPS before bagging? Please, Tarquin...

First of all I am no expert.
Yes I am using flax so it soaks up a lot of epoxy. Hopefully bagging with peel ply and bleeder will reduce the amount of epoxy. It's a 11ft x 29 SUP and it took about 800 grams!!!! of epoxy. 160g cloth. I have used flax before and not put enough epoxy and it wasn't good.
The EPS is 15kgs and yes it was sealed. I had already bagged the bottom 150g carbon/innegra. I did this without sealing but you have to be super careful and keep the pressure down. You need a valve and gauge. If you bag an EPS blank at full pressure it crushes it. Expensive mistake!
I think the less time the pump is on the better, hence the poor mans oven. This really kicks the epoxy off quickly.
Like I said I am no expert but happy to share and hopefully stop people making the same mistakes I have.
It's a lot of extra time and materials and I wonder if it's really worth it. I have hand layed flax and it's not great though. I like the look and it's going to have a wooden deck. So it's more for the look than anything. They say flax has good dampening properties too.
I weighed the board before. Will let you know how much it added. I hope under 1 kg. I am normally wrong.

Select to expand quote

tarquin1 said..
First of all I am no expert.
Yes I am using flax so it soaks up a lot of epoxy. Hopefully bagging with peel ply and bleeder will reduce the amount of epoxy. It's a 11ft x 29 SUP and it took about 800 grams!!!! of epoxy. 160g cloth. I have used flax before and not put enough epoxy and it wasn't good.
The EPS is 15kgs and yes it was sealed. I had already bagged the bottom 150g carbon/innegra. I did this without sealing but you have to be super careful and keep the pressure down. You need a valve and gauge. If you bag an EPS blank at full pressure it crushes it. Expensive mistake!
I think the less time the pump is on the better, hence the poor mans oven. This really kicks the epoxy off quickly.
Like I said I am no expert but happy to share and hopefully stop people making the same mistakes I have.
It's a lot of extra time and materials and I wonder if it's really worth it. I have hand layed flax and it's not great though. I like the look and it's going to have a wooden deck. So it's more for the look than anything. They say flax has good dampening properties too.
I weighed the board before. Will let you know how much it added. I hope under 1 kg. I am normally wrong.

Thanks for the weight report Tarquin. The Flax is very light stuff at 160 grams for the whole lenght of the board. It sounds like sponge but thickness does the dampening to pressure dent on deck. That is a good composite indeed!
I'm awaiting some more info from you later on, keep on reporting !

Really happy with the result. And added about 850g as I thought. Yes that means about half the epoxy is wasted. But you get a great result.
Paulownia deck next then rail tape to cover the join between the wood deck and rail.

Weighs 5.7kgs at the moment. No I didn't weigh before and after the carbon/Innegra.
You idiot!

Hey Tarquin1 ,looks good is there a reason you are using flax under the wood instead of glass? or you just want to.

No flax under the wood. The deck has a light layer of glass for the moment.

Great progress, keep the photo updates coming