An update on Epoxy

I have spoken on here before about moving from West epoxy to PEC for this project because I became fed up with the amount of amine blush and the cost of West.   Having used PEC quite a bit (3-4KG) for bonding, filleting and coating I am looking again at an alternative.  The PEC epoxy is easy to mix and use but is more viscous than would be ideal, heating the epoxy helps but when working in an unheated workshop on an unheated hull the epoxy soon thickens up.  The biggest issue with PEC (and I have spoken to them about this) is the cure time, it just seems to take ages.  I have tried using it for coating in a heated environment and that works fine but it still takes a much longer than the standard epoxy from West.   When using PEC in the workshop it literally takes days to reach a full cure.  Now if I was after an epoxy with a long working time and I was building during the summer or a in a heated workshop then PEC would be absolutely fine but for me as a home-user in a unheated garage in winter it just doesn’t quite stack up.  Unfortunately PEC don’t make a fast or rapid version of their product but on the positive side their product did not produce amine blush, there was a small amount of blushing but significantly less than West.

So next up on the epoxy test will be Syntac EPAFD from reactive resins, having spoken to them I am going to try their “Rapid” and “Fast” hardeners.   I am hopeful that the Rapid hardener will allow wet-on-tack coating of the Goat at cold temperatures (5-10 Celsius) this will hopefully allow up to three coats in a working day.   I’ll report back on how I get on but so far I have been impressed with the knowledgeable staff and willingness to help.