Thread: Best tool for spreading small areas of epoxy

coffee stirrers. I got a box of them once years ago and still got half to go.

I'd like to know where you can bulk buy cheap disposable brushes. like 2cents a brush or whatever I don't have a problem with chucking them out. wasting solvent try to clean them.

I agree. I buy $1 brushes and try to get 2-3 uses out of them by washing, or soaking (I use acetone for this) just enough to stop them hardening- but it all depends how many hours you have between sessions. I feel really guilty throwing out after one use, but OK about 2-3 uses. Some jobs deserve a sparkling new brush and some only need a vaguely flexible mixing utensil (especially if most of it will be done with a roller). If this is your last mix for 4 days you mightn't waste a new brush on it if you can make do with one to 'chuck' after this session. Patterns of work have a lot to do with the amount of waste generated.

For some small glue jobs on flat surfaces I just use the mixing stick to spread it. The sticks I use are square ended and tapered to a blade edge. Other times I use a small artists type brush. They're available in sets at the $2 type shops. Anything under about 10mm wide is easy to clean with a small amount of solvent. The main thing is to squeeze out most of the resin with a rag then dip in solvent and squeeze out again a few times. Takes very little solvent but more rags - there's always a trade off isn't there?

Also be careful of the solvent going through the rag while squeezing - acetone dissolves vinyl and latex gloves almost instantly.

Originally Posted by rob540

Patterns of work have a lot to do with the amount of waste generated.

thats a very true statement. I guess its because I'm new at it that I'm not working efficiently and hence wasting so much. It does appall me to look in the bin and see it nearly full after a days work.

Arron

wouldn't worry so much Arron. glueups are always going to be like that.

Hi there,
Every so often I go through some scrap wood, usually pine, and bandsaw a large batch of strips, various widths, and cut to length, about 100mm. Then I go to the disk sander and bevel opposite ends of each stick, nice and sharp. I have an ice cream full of them, along with another full of ply or melamine tablets on which to mix epoxy and fillers. The various widths can suit different needs, filling small holes or smearing over large surfaces. Double ended, you get two uses of each stick. I reckon the time taken to do it saves time on the job, looking for the bits you need.

Cheers

Howdy,

I really don't recommend soaking brushes in vinegar. It is too easy for a little to hide up in the bristles some time and then be reapplied to the workpiece.

Had a case of this last week "epoxy didn't cure"

Vinegar only belongs on clothes and human beings. It stops the crosslinking reaction dead in its tracks.

If you want to store a brush for the next day then put it in a tin of solvent. However solvents will often be more expensive than the brush ... not to mention the effort.

When gluing anything but end grain I just use the stirring stick to spread the thickened resin mix.

When i do have to brush a bit of unthickened resin I always plan so one brush will do the whole job.

If you grab a brush just to do a "little bit" it probably means that you have not planned the job properly - and this does come with experience.

How many brushes have you used? To use a dozen or so when building a small sailboat is not unreasonable (though you can get away with a lot less with good planning).

What are you using them for?

For example if you are using them to lay off the epoxy after rolling to pop airbubbles and get rid of the dimples you don't need to. You can just hold the roller from turning and lightly slide it across the surface.

Most gluing you don't need a brush at all - only use it for precoating the surfaces. This is only really needed for end grain where you need to brush some on about 5 mins in advance of the gluing process.

At the recent Duckflat school I would say people building canoes got all the epoxying done with about a half dozen brushes. People with the Goat Island Skiff, a 16ft dinghy, were using about 10.

I have a FAQ that discusses a lot of the methods for epoxying. To save time, materials and expendables like brushes. It covers most of the major processes and you will find brushes seldom mentioned.

One major way is to do coating of components BEFORE they go into the boat. Some can go in wet (eg underside of decks) and others can be coated and sanded before they go into the boat. This means that there might only be a bit of exposed timber where the components join. And you just use one brush before the decks go on to work over all those areas with the three coats wet on wet - you can even epoxy the underside of the deck at the same time. Make up the glue mix and glue the deck on while everything is still tacky.

One roller. One brush. and a major part of the job done.

Epoxy boatbuilding FAQ is here

Best wishes
Michael Storer

I bought a tin of botecote solvent for the first time ever this build, and it
has already paid for itself in brushes. Using varnish brushes (which -used- to
be cheap) & getting 1/2 dozen uses or more out of each brush. In fact, the
only ones I've thrown away so far have been the ones I used & forgot to clean.

Merely scrape off most of the pox & scrunch them into a splash of solvent in
an old stainless steel shaving cup. Save the used solvent into a glass jar -
it settles out & get another couple of uses out of that before it no longer
dissolves pox adequately. Wash the solvent out with orange scrub, rinse, &
final clean with soap & water.

Really small areas, I spread epoxy with the sharpened ice cream stick I used
to stir the brew. Wipe off stick after use & that gets re-used too. A decent
encrustment of pox up the handle makes them stronger & easier to hold.
Occasionally I pretend they are a real tool & sand them sharp again.

Disagree that the solvent instantly dissolves vinyl gloves. It takes at least a
couple of seconds to seep through them. And the glove remains intact.
For a while. More or less. Next box of gloves will be Nitrile.

cheers
AJ

Sharpened ice cream stick is OK, but you can never eat enough icecream.

That's a joke for the introduction.

I find icecream sticks way tooooo small, but the right principle. A chisel edged cleanup stick about 19 to 25mm wide does the whole area to the left and right of the fillet in one sweep each.

Brilliant!

MIK

Hey MIK
If you find ice cream sticks tooooooo small, it's because the boats you build are
tooooooo big !!
AJ

I use various shapes of palette knives like these. Cheap as chip and last forever.

Cheers
Michael

maybe you could spend a couple of hours making up tons of them.

like get old drinking straws. essentially free. get em from bins or whatever. find hair from somewhere. maybe from the hairdressor be free. (or do they keep it ?)

and just stick the hairs in the straw with a bit of epoxy. make up a hundred of them and never have to worry about wasting a brush again. but epoxy may not stick to plastic straws. Maybe get paper straws. or maybe you work it out.

tongue depressors

Takes 4.5 seconds to change a scrap of ply or timber into a filleting stick (with either a flat end or a radiussed end) or a chisel edged clean up stick. In big jobs something for cleanup that you can just push with your elbow behind it is really efficient.

Tongue depressors only come in one radius which might not be right for the size of the ply. Needs to be 2.5 to 3 times the thickness of the thinner ply.

Big tools save time.

But ... with great power comes great responsibility.

MIK