Epoxy in the winter

[Kittyhawk]

The summer was great in the aircraftery. I could glue bits together and handle them (carefully) a couple of hours later. But now its Autuum and the temperature today is 22°C and epoxy cure time is starting to stretch out.
So the plan is to build a curing box a bit bigger than a shoe box, heat it with a lightbulb and use a small computer fan to move a bit of air through it.
Like everything, there's probably more to this than first meets the eye so any thoughts, ideas, experience welcomed.

 

[Sandyn]

Is using a faster setting adhesive an option?

 

[Ollie78]

Your plan should work, just a note that it is important to pre warm the epoxy before mixing rather than just heating it up after.

When I used to do a lot of epoxy repair work we would put the epoxy on the dash of the van for the journey to site on winter days so it was ready to go when we got there, the opposite in midsummer where it needed chilling in a bucket of water.

Ollie

 

[Jones]

22 centigrade seems quite warm. You could try a faster hardener, resin systems will have different speed hardeners for different temperatures and applications. Certainly easier and probably cheaper than making a box.

 

[Kittyhawk]

Is using a faster setting adhesive an option?

Not really. I am using a thickened epoxy glue, one to one mix from a company called Norski. Its good stuff, non slumping and has a glue line that tones in well with the timber I use. I got a dud batch from Norski a while ago and they responded to my complaint by sending me two enormous pots of hardener and resin free of charge so I'm stuck with what I have.

Your plan should work, just a note that it is important to pre warm the epoxy before mixing rather than just heating it up after.

When I used to do a lot of epoxy repair work we would put the epoxy on the dash of the van for the journey to site on winter days so it was ready to go when we got there, the opposite in midsummer where it needed chilling in a bucket of water.

Ollie

In the winter time I've been storing the glue in the hot water cupboard and also placing glued up items in there as well but wife gets a bit tetchy about it since she likes to put a bit of washing in there to dry on occasion.
So with a curing box I thought to aim for 25-28° by experimenting with different wattage bulbs. Should one use a computer fan to blow outside air into the box or draw inside air out, or does it make no difference?

 

[Kittyhawk]

This reminds me of a loony old boatbuilder I did a bit of work with years ago.
He had a very eclectic number of sayings, the one that comes to mind..
'In the universe there are only two substances - stuff and glue, and even glue is made of stuff.'

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I don't think I've ever used epoxy at such a high temperature as 22c. - unless your epoxy is specifically made to be slow curing I'd think there is something wrong with it.

 

[Kittyhawk]

I don't think I've ever used epoxy at such a high temperature as 22c. - unless your epoxy is specifically made to be slow curing I'd think there is something wrong with it.

Norski is a NZ company so their glue will be formulatec for our climate. For me, 22° is rather chilly, 27 -28° is nice, 30° getting warmish. 22° - 5 hours curing time. 28° - 2 hours.

 

[Jones]

A fan and vents will only cool your box. I would suggest a tubular greenhouse heater is better than a light bulb if they are available or a warming mat or heater as used by reptile owners.

 

[Ollie78]

What about using a peltier module ? This could be used to heat or cool the "box" depending on which way around it is ( or maybe polarity switch changes the mode, I forget).
I think a fan will be too much as Jones says. Maybe small vent, otherwise you are wasting too much heat.

Ollie

 

[Sandyn]

You could get an inexpensive temperature controller perhaps something like this and a power resistor, something like this run it from a 12V supply. I just plucked these from Amazon, as an illustration. You would have to mount the resistors on a small sheet of metal

 

[Kittyhawk]

What about using a peltier module ?

Now that is clever and the best part is I think I have one somewhere.

 

[Sideways]

I used West epoxy for a project with complex assembly a little while ago and my problem was the reverse. Trying to slow down the gelling time. That meant keep the resin and parts cool, work early morning after a cool overnight and mix in small batches in a cooled steel tray to draw the heat.
So the reverse of these should help. Mix all the glue for the job together, in a plastic pot, glue up in the afternoon when the shop's warmed up and try to prewarm your parts - maybe infra red radiant heating like auto body shops use ?

 

[AES]

If those pots you have aren't too big, could you put them in the fridge? If not decant smaller amounts into old jam jars (example). But do remember to clearly mark both the tops and the jars so you don't accidentally put hardener top onto resin jar or vice-versa.

I keep all my epoxy (and cyano) in a fridge to extend shelf life.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Except he's trying to get the stuff to set, not prevent its setting.

 

[Fergie 307]

I use a flat electrically heated tray. It's actually intended for winemaking to keep your demijohns at the right temperature. Not sure what the temperature actually is, but it's warm to the touch. It's designed to take two full demijohns, so pretty robust.

 

[Dabop]

Norski is a NZ company so their glue will be formulatec for our climate. For me, 22° is rather chilly, 27 -28° is nice, 30° getting warmish. 22° - 5 hours curing time. 28° - 2 hours.

22 is positively chilly for me too- by that stage its jumper and trackies time for me ...
Today's quite pleasant at 31C- tomorrows a warmish 34C (overnight low of 19C!!!)
Much better than over summer when we had over a week on end where it was over 42C every day, and overnight lows of 27....

 

[DBC]

22 is positively chilly for me too- by that stage its jumper and trackies time for me ...
Today's quite pleasant at 31C- tomorrows a warmish 34C (overnight low of 19C!!!)
Much better than over summer when we had over a week on end where it was over 42C every day, and overnight lows of 27....
View attachment 132167

You guys are rubbing it in a bit. I was born in NZ and grew up in both Oz and NZ. I have been in the UK for a decade and more and am now fully acclimatised to the weather here. When I am fitting my joinery work in customer’s houses over here I always look at what their central heating thermostat is set to if I spy it on the wall somewhere; yeah, every single house here is heated usually with central heating. Somewhere between 18 and 22C is what they are typically set at. In fact it was actually colder inside on winter mornings in the places where I grew up. In unheated housing in the depths of winter it might only be 10C inside first thing in the morning. We just thought nothing of it and put something woollen on. What I do like though is that for about 1/2 the year over here I wear long trousers at work. I had only ever worked in shorts until I moved here. Some days when I walk down to the joinery in my long trousers it feels like I have somehow accidentally become a grownup.

 

[Dabop]

LOL- I 'might' even consider turning the aircon on for a while tomorrow, but probably not, just the fan is enough until its 36 or so...

Where I am, we sometimes get down (just) into the single digits when there is a strong southerly coming up from Antarctica, and thats jumper AND jacket weather- or sit inside with the heaters going lol...
Although (to ham it up a bit) it has actually snowed here in Queensland THREE TIMES this MILLENNIUM!!!!

(that was a few hundred km south of me tho)

Saw a much more Aussie scene tho the other day- the bushies fighting a fire, their truck was actually sitting in the middle of flood waters doing it...
Only in Australia do you get major flooding- AND bushfires at the same place at the same time lol
(this lot of flooding has been the worst ever though for some places- the town I used to live in a few decades ago was basically destroyed- over two thousand of five thousands houses totally destroyed, most of the rest severely damaged...)
:-(
The local shopping center had over a metre and a half of water in the shops- doesn't sound that bad- but the shops are on the second story... and I used to drive a pantech truck through the carpark under them....
This is literally right across the road from the Shopping Square, my old pantech just fitted under that annex at the tyre shop when it was jacked up, the drone shows the water coming across the roof of that tyre shop, and it ended up another metre and a half higher than when that shot was taken... the roof on Autobarn was just going under at the peak...

ETA you can see the McDonalds just to the left above (green roof_- the waters in the gutters... and below... (you can 'just' see the top of the McCafe sign sticking out of the water...)

(sorry about the thread derail, just all in this one post lol)

 

[Solicitus]

I keep my gallon jug of epoxy warmish by storing it in a box I made from an old sheet of celotex . The joints were simply butted and held together with foil tape. My heat source is a 100w radiant light bulb. It stops the epoxy crystallising in the winter months, allowing me to carry on canoe building. If it is small parts you are epoxying you could do the same. To get the mixed epoxy to cure I put a "tent" over the canoe made with tinfoil blister insulation and an old bit of carpet on top, and an oil filled heater underneath. All done with rubbish I had lying around.