Andy Miller from BoatworksToday, covers one of the most frequently asked questions he receives: “How do you know how much resin you are going to need when wetting out a particular sized area?” At first, it was always a guessing game for him, but after some trial and error, he came up with a system that works and demonstrates it in today’s video of the week!
For this demonstration, Andy starts off by using his electric cordless scissors to cut out two 12×12” squares of 1708 Biaxial Fiberglass Cloth. And, if you’ve been following his Bertram Moppie Restoration videos, you know Andy uses both Polyester Resin and High Performance Epoxy Resin for different purposes and applications on the boat. So, he wanted to experiment with wetting out each square foot piece with both resins to show the difference between the two when figuring out how much of each to mix!
After completely wetting out each cloth, he looks at the measuring cup to see how much resin was used for that square foot. From there, all you need to do is take the size of the particular area you will be wetting out and times it by the ounces of resin used to figure out how much resin you will need with very little waste. As you can see in the video, he used 2oz of the Polyester Resin and 3oz of the Epoxy Resin. The reason for that is the viscosity. Polyester Resin is going to have a thinner viscosity than epoxy, which makes it soak into the glass easier. Now, another thing to consider is that the amount of resin needed to wet out fiberglass cloth depends on the weight of the cloth. You can see how each cloth is rated in ounces in this helpful article!
Tune into today’s video to see this quick and easy tip and be sure to let Andy know in the comments if this was helpful or if you have other ways to measure out your resin with little to no waste. This method is pretty straightforward and should be an easy way for you to take this information and apply it towards your own fiberglassing projects. Thanks for watching!
