By Daveym - 5/11/2021 4:37:29 AM
So I’ve been building and glassing surfboards for 10 years. I only ever did hand lay ups with poly until last year. I bit off a little more than I was ready to chew, had mixed success, and now I’m obsessed with dialing it in.
the first board I attempted an infusion on went ok. I did a hand layup of carbon on the rails to prevent warping of the board in a bag. I then used spray adhesive to dry layup 2 oz E cloth, 2mm soric lrc, and 4 oz E cloth on top, peel ply on top and infusion mesh on the rails where there was no soric. I did this for both sides of the board and threw it in a bag, pulled vacuum and infused. It worked, but I wasted an absurd amount of epoxy because of where I placed my intake and vacuum lines. They were both dead center on the board, one on the deck and one on the bottom, with spiral tubing essentially connecting them together. It made for a highway of epoxy to the vacuum line. In hindsight I don’t know what I was thinking, and I’m shocked it infused fully. It turned out ok minus the indentations from the hose lines on the deck and bottom. Lessons learned.
The second one was a total failure. I did the same lay up, but put infusion mesh across the entire board. It infused quickly like I was hoping, but I also made dumb decision #2 and used a cheap peel ply. I couldn’t get it off and resorted to sanding away the infusion mesh and the peel ply. After a few hours of frustration I decided to take the loss and threw it in a dumpster.
#3 actually went pretty good, the only problems were excessive epoxy waste due to the whole board being covered in peel ply, and the 2mm difference in where the soric meets the rails cause for sanding issues if i dont build up the rails with a thick sanding coat afterwards. (I will be recessing the entire deck and bottom by 2mm on the next ones to fit the soric.)
all of that is just a history for where I’m at right now. I’m getting ready to do 3 more of these, and have a few questions for you guys with much more infusion experience than me.
#1. I hate peel ply. Do I need to use it? I have soric running through the majority of the board. I want to put a minimal amount of peel ply along the rails (edges of the board for non surfers) where there is no soric, with some infusion mesh on top of that. If i don’t use the peel ply, will i have an excessive amount of epoxy? Over saturation?
#2. The vacuum line and resin intake lines. Both sides of the board get infused at the same time. My infusion core covers the whole deck and bottom, but the rails (edges) dont have soric on them because it can’t conform to the shape. As i said above, there will be some peel ply and infusion mesh in those areas, but could i get away with only doing it on the side of my intake? Ill add an illustration of what i want to do for clarification.
  
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By Daveym - 5/13/2021 3:22:02 AM
That’s not too bad, less than I thought.
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