West System

[Tim]

Post your experiences with West System epoxy products here.

[grampianman]

I had my first experience with using epoxy and the West product last night.
I have a little eight foot dinghy with some 'issues' which I am working on and I found the stuff easy to work with and, so far, so good.
It wet the cloth easily and set as advertised. I did go so far as to buy the pumps so that measuring was made easier. Man, no counting drops of hardener or looking to see if the resin was at 4 ounces or 5! I had only used polyester resin before and was very pleasantly surprised. Now I can get bolder and mix larger amounts.

Cheers,
Ian

[bcooke]

As I am learning how to use this epoxy stuff I have been sticking with the West System. I get the impression that there are better/easier/more specialized epoxies out there but West seems to be the standard others compare themselves to so I thought it was a good place to start my knowledge base from.

Despite the normal learning curve things seem to be working out okay but I had one question. Is there any way to clean the stuff off your tools or are the application tools to be considered disposable? I have already learned to buy cheap brushes by the box but what about the foam and ridged rollers? I got about a couple of days out of them before they gummed up and started creating more problems than they solved.

Another lesson learned: If one is applying epoxy while wearing shorts and inadvertently kneels in a drop of semi-cured epoxy. The resulting ripping sound when standing will shortly be followed by quite sharp pains and much loud and indecent language! At least I won't need to shave my legs for awhile...

-Britton

[Tim]

Britton,

Use acetone to clean your tools. Air rollers and the like can be kept in a pail of acetone and then cleaned and dried when needed. Over time, the acetone in the pail can get full of dissolved resin and will evaporate, so keep an eye on things and clean/change/refill as necessary. A cover of some sort holds down the evaporation rate.

For brushes and rollers, it's best to consider them disposable each time, but for some ongoing jobs you can even soak your cheap brushes in your bucket of acetone overnight or whatever, and just shake it out when you're ready to use it. They actually last a long time this way, though use your judgment. Don't ruin an epoxy job for want of a cheap brush.

The foam rollers usually fall apart even during use, so would probably not stand up well to cleaning. Plan on a new one each time.

It's also fun to find spots of epoxy on your skin that you missed during your personal cleanup, sometimes many minutes or even hours later. It's extra fun to peel it off later.

[Doug]

First time I ever used them (Blister Repair) easy to follow instructions. No problems even in cold weather .