El Crappola!

The expoxy on the deck is still tacky, three days after "finishing"...

I asked my stupid question on the Classic Plastic forum - Tim L. was kind enough to respond, which is great, because he would be my first choice to ask anyway, but I didn't want to keep pestering him because he's just a little busy building a new house. But, he said if it wasn't dry by, ummm, yesterday, "something may be fishy". But, he didn't realize I was using the slow hardener, so maybe I can revise his estimate by a couple of days? (Not to worry Tim, I have changed my pump back to the 205 fast and smoking hardener.)

But, not to be deterred, because that was not what I wanted to hear, I called West System's tech support. That guy wasn't too worried at all (of course not, he didn't just spend his Saturday grinding and glassing his side deck) and said that with the low temperatures we've been having, it'll take a while to cure. The ambient temperature needs to climb a bit to get things to harden up. The West System manual says 60 degrees ins the minimum for the slow hardener (206) which I used, and the high's have been barely above that for the last three days. Here's hoping he's right. I won't get to it until this weekend anyway, so we'll see.

My friend Scott also sent an email to talk me down - he's no slouch when it comes to epoxy either - he's built his own wood kayak and claims it floats, though I've only seen it in his basement. Thanks Scott.

Besides, as I said before, I've got three, no four "empty" used pots that I used for mixing last weekend that haven't cured yet. I just can't believe that even I could screw up mixing epoxy that many times!

Anyway, it looks like the sun will make a showing and it'll finally get back into the high 70's tomorrow, so I'm trying to be optimistic. Me and the remaining bugs that haven't gotten themselves stuck to the deck are really hoping the stuff hardens.

On another note, Tops in Quality was supposed to ship the stern rail on Monday. I called them and found out they are behind schedule and would need until Friday... Good thing the rail won't be needed until next year -maybe I'll have it by then.