Hey there, today we’re going to talk about an epoxy. Now this is not about one brand of epoxy, but in general, how do you use them as a kind of a category of glues? I’ve been hearing people talking recently online about, um, problems with bubbles and crystallization and different things. And I’m going to show you how to basically, uh, reconstitute your crystal epoxy and also how to mix it and use it without creating bubbles in your final product. So let’s get started on that. I tie a lot of flies, build rods and things. So I always try to buy an economical size container, the larger containers, like the courts and the paints. And if these sit around and get cold, especially, um, they will crystallize not particularly part B, but the part A. So before you start doing anything, a box you used to check and make sure that your part a is all liquid. See the best epoxy resins available on the market today – https://epharz.de.

When you tip it on its side, it all drains away from the bottom. You can see there are no crystals and things in it. If it’s gotten a little cold and you tip it on its side, you’ll start to see little lumps building up around the bottom. Those are just some of the components in the makeup. The part a you don’t want them lumpy. You want them mixed into your solution. Now, if it’s just slightly crispy like this or crystallized, the easiest way to do this is just to warm it up with a little hot water. Now it’s tempting to just put the part a in there, because it’s the only one that’s got the crystals in it. But when you get ready to use your epoxy, you want both part a and B to be basically the same temperature. So if you’re going to warm up one side, you want to make sure you warm up the other as well.

Do not heat, better shake

Now, the worst thing you can do when you heat, this is if you take it out and it looks like things are going well is to shake it all you do when you shake it is you introduce a lot of bubbles into this, and it’ll give you more problems down the road. When you get ready to use it. The best thing to do is just start and rotate it like this. And you’ll see all those chunks down there. They’re almost all going away down into the rest of the part. A but there’s still one. There is just a big one hanging up here. So we’ll just dip them back in again. We’ll keep them the same temperature. After these have sat, you can take them out and turn them after five or 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And it is all liquidy. You’re ready to mix.

Now, what do you do if you’ve got one, the sat around and your part eight is completely solid in the bottom of the container. And with most glues, you’d think this is just a throwaway time, but with a epoxy, it’s not. So if you have a bottle of a epoxy (I prefer ProMarine) like this part aid, that’s totally crystallized. I usually find about the time or maybe to start on a project and you can put it in water for an hour or two and rotate it and everything. But the problem you’re going to run into is this could take a lot of time. A lot of effort. I have found an easier way. The microwave now putting it in a microwave might sound easy, but you’ll find that most microwaves aren’t tall enough for this to fit in next easiest solution. Lay it on its side. It’s going to lay in there on the turntable and turn and heat. But if you remember any science classes from anywhere in school, anything that’s cool when it heats and expands. So if you had this lane on the side, on your microwave turntable, after about 30 seconds of this warming up, it’ll heat up, expand, and it will blow this cap right off the end of the container. And it will spray part a epoxy all around the inside of your microwave, not a good concept. So here’s what we do to fix that.

First off, you need some kind of a container that is smaller to fit in your microwave will fit in and we’ll rotate. I’m just using this an example. I usually use like a old dinner plate next, what you want to do? Take the cap off. And what we’re going to do with this is we’re going to lay it down like this. So it won’t spray out all the liquid inside as it melts. Sometimes it still does still shoots a little spatters. So there’s a solution for that as we’re just gonna take a couple of folds of paper towel, put it over the top and snap a rubber band around it.

Gases Getaway

Just like that. It doesn’t have to be tight. Shouldn’t be tight. Cause you want the gases that are coming out in the heat to get away. So we’re going to lay that outside like that, put it in the microwave in two minutes, you’re going to have very hot, very liquid part, a that’s ready to use again. Now in this case, you’re going to have to let it cool down quite a bit before he can use it, but it will save your part, a boxy. Okay? So now it’s mixed some of this couple of things about a epoxy. There are the longer setting, like 30 minute set or longer, and things like rod finish, which will set in a few hours or like the quick setting, like five minutes. Now they all work on a thermal reaction. They heat each other up. When you mix them, it causes a setting action.

So what you want to make sure of, as you’ve picked up a poxy, that’s going to meet the needs that you’re using it for. You don’t want to mix up a five minute ride coding uepoxy unless you’re just planning, doing one guide on a repair or something. You want to mix enough that it’s going to last you during the time you cook the rod. In this case, I’m going to mix some of this. It’s about a 30 minute set because I’ve got a couple of projects I want to do. So we’re going to start with the one of the two ways to mix a larger volume. Or if you’re doing something like a rod or a small volume, if you’re doing something like a couple shrimp backs and things, there are different ways to mix this. So a few things you need to mix a epoxy effectively are some kind of a container you want to be flat bottomed and fairly sloping side.

Mix with Hot Water

You don’t want anything that’s real tiny, narrow, and tall. It has to be where you can get access to the sides and scrape the sides. Well, something to stir the uepoxy with. Um, if you’re trying to keep bubbles out of Popsicle sticks are really good because they’re smooth. Wouldn’t coffee, stir sticks work well also, but the wood has a texture which will hold little air bubbles and tend to make more bubbles in the apostasy is just steroid. If I’m doing something small where I’m going to use a brush like on foil and just mixing a small amount, I’ll even use the back of the paintbrush. Cause it’s nice and smooth and doesn’t put bubbles in. Next is you need something to hold some hot water to help get the bubbles out. I will show you that process in a bit and the same type of thing to paying the higher, doing it either a little alcohol lamp, uh, candles work, but they’re a little harder to control and burn it radically. And some kind of a torque, either an alcohol torch that holds alcohol up and creates a little jet stream or other torches. These, you have to be careful not to get too hot and scorch things.

And then if you’re doing a small batch, some oil to mix up, so the starter mix for a large quantity, we’re going to use one of these little solo containers. Like you put a catch up the end of the restaurant, and then I’m going to use my wooden stick because I want to show you how to get rid of bubbles. Once the poxy is mixed, okay, I’m going to take my part, a part B. And this is of course way a unscientific. It’s not my measurements by eye, but this is from a lot of years of practice and I’m just gonna put equal amounts a part a and part B in the container, just watching to see that the line between the two of them stays right down in the middle as I’m pouring

and you can see kind of their half and half, it won’t stay there long. Then going start mixing it up. Now may make sure you mix whenever the time on the bottle says 30 seconds or a minute, and you don’t want to quit this. The idea is not to make mashed potatoes out of it. You just want it to be combined. I’m scraping around the outside of the container to make sure on the edges where there was one part or another, it gets scraped into the mix. I’m just going to go around and I’m going to let the part that’s up on top, drift back down to the bottom, but it combined as they, as it goes. And you’re still seeing some bubbles in there, part of that’s because of the wooden mixing stick, holding air bubbles on it.

Fix the Bubbles

Yeah. And let it sit flat. Let some of the bubbles start coming out. We want to make sure that we get it all distributed well. So it’s going to clear up nicely and set properly, but I’m not being careful because I want you to see bubbles. And they’re your bubbles in there. And the first and easiest way to start clearing them, just to take your little container like this and get a container of hot water and just set your look container of a right in there. Now can’t see it at this moment from camera angle, but all the bubbles that have an epoxy are coming to the surface and popping don’t want to leave it, sit in there more than 30 seconds to a minute, cause you don’t want to overheat it and have it start setting up. You do want to bring all the bubbles to the top. So after we’ve sent it in there a little while, pull it out, let it roll around a little bit. That’ll also help get the bubbles out. And then the professional rod builders and the guys out there, we really know this next trick.

When you heat a poxy, it gets thinner and allows all the bubbles to come to the surface and pot. So I’m using my little alcohol torch, heating the surface and allowing the bubbles that are working there, work towards the top to go ahead and burst. And this is how you finish off a epoxy. When you want a nice bubble free finish. And this uepoxy is ready to use for mixing a small amount. A couple of things you’ll need are a piece of aluminum, foil and a mixer. I’m going again. You use the Popsicle stick or the copy stir with your aluminum foil. I like to make it two thicknesses. So if I rip it, I don’t drip a epoxy all over the place, but you want it to be smooth and flat. So I’m going to take this and I’m going to really work on getting the wrinkles out of it because every one of those wrinkles will put a bubble in your epoxy as you mix it.

So that’s pretty close. So now I’m going to take, uh, my part a and part B, okay. My dogs down there on the floor talking to me, he wanting dinner. So we’ll make this quick. I’m just putting a little part a and a little part B out again. I’m matching the size of the puddles well like that. And that’ll do quite a few pieces of if you’re doing shrimp backs or other things, then we’re going to take our stick and we’re just going to start and we’re going to go and kind of fold it back and forth over each other. You want a scrape, but you don’t want to scrape it so much that you tear your aluminum foil. So I’m just working the different together. You can see no matter how careful I go, there’s bubbles building up in it, but we’re going to deal with those here in just a moment.

A 30-minute epoxy

So it’s going to set quicker than a lot of things would, but not too long. Not too quick rather. Okay. So now we’ve got it mixed. There are bubbles in it and we’ll show you how we’re going to take care of the bubbles. What we’re going to use for this is a little alcohol torch. It basically light the top of it. When you squeeze it, air blows out this nozzle and blows a little jet flame out where you use it to heat this. Now there’s really actually two ways to go about this. The other is with an alcohol lamp. This one tends to be a little more touchy and I’ll show you how both of them work. We’re going to heat this. uepoxy from below through the foil. So we’ll light our lamp up there. And the hard part about doing this is not cooking your uepoxy.

We’re just going to warm it enough so that the bubbles are allowed to come out of it. You warm it slightly and it becomes more viscous or more thinner. And the bubbles will pop come right out the top. So we don’t want to do much more than that on it. Since there are still just a few bubbles on the top, I’m going to use my alcohol lamp and low on it, very lightly. And those bubbles we’ll come right to the top and pot. Now you can use any kind of little heat torch. You want a nest. The main thing have to remember is not to get it too hot. So there’s an epoxy. That’s basically clear and bubble free and ready to use. So now you know how to mix your epoxy and you might be planning on putting it on a rod blank or a lure or a fly back.

And since you have hung around with me here, till the end, I’ll show you how to correct that problem. Even if you still got a bubble in it, even when you were applying it to like ride bike, let me show you how that works. Okay. A technique for getting air bubbles out of a poxy on something like if you’re doing a rod. So what I’ve got here is a bunch of POCs. It’s got a little bit of bubbles in it. I’ve got a little spot on the rod here. I’m going to add a little, say about it, a little bit of detailed rap or something to it. I’m just going to hold the brush steady and let the epoxy go all the way around.

Final Words

I’m going to put a bunch on here so you can see the process involved here and why he is your friend when you’re doing things like rods and Lewers and using the boxy on them. So now if you can see, I’ve got a pretty big glob of epoxy on there. There’s some bubbles in it. I’m going to use the alcohol torch or any little torch you have, again, do not put too much heat on this. You don’t want to damage the blank and you’re using graphite. This works. If you’re using bamboo or fiberglass, this made destroy the blank. So you use extreme caution. So I’m just going to take the alcohol torch and do some little puffs.

Relight my torch, little puffs of air out there at the epoxy and the bubbles are just popping, coming right to the surface and popping. The other thing it does is the heat liquefies the epoxy more and gets it to run around more evenly around. You’ll see a bubble developing at the bottom or a drip it’s because I have a little bit too much boxy on there. So by heating it up like this, you don’t only get the bubbles out. You find out if you’ve put too much on, you can go in and catch that drip. Now, when ads allowed to cool, there’s no more bubbles in it. It will form a really nice, smooth guide wrap or decoration or whatever you’re doing with the epoxy. So that’s how the professionals do it. This is how I do it, but I’m in no means a professional, but I hope this works for you. Use the techniques and have a lot of fun to work on louvers and flies and rods and whatever you choose to do. Thanks for watching.