cold weather epoxy

[Tashmoo2]

Need some advice on working with epoxy in cold. My 18 ft seacraft is in unheated garage for winter so I can replace transom and deck. I am using RAKA epoxy. I heat garage with LPG space heater while I am working but will not keep it on at night. The temperatures in Southern CT can drop near 0 at night and stay below freezing during day. It does not freeze in garage at night. Would you do epoxy work now or wait until it got warmer?

[billythekid]

tashmoo that is a tough call becuase for epoxy to cure to its full strenght it needs time and to make it kick fast with extra hardener, it will become brittle. also be careful doing epoxy work with an open flame and make sure you dont stay in there all day with the heater going as the heater will and can burn all the oxygen up in the garage and you can get very sick from it. It happened to my neighbor before installed a gas heater with fresh air intake.

[Islandtrader]

Need some advice on working with epoxy in cold. Would you do epoxy work now or wait until it got warmer?

I picked this up of a epoxy sight.

Below about 50 degrees F the chemical reaction need to cure the epoxy becomes very very slow (or might even almost stop). However, at low temperatures epoxies also become thicker. With many epoxies they become too thick to get out of the container and or to mix easily. Low temperature epoxies usually consist of a 'fast' curing agent, or in other words, an accelerator and accelerated curing agent. These 'fast' curing agents speed up the reaction so that at low temperatures the epoxy will cure at 'normal' time rates. At 'normal' temperatures these fast epoxies would get hard very quickly, probably having a pot life too short to use in most situations.

I would wait until the weather warms, IMHO.

[thehermit]

Tashmoo,
You may want to spend your time doing demo and grinding work until about March or some mild weekend (yea right). Get everything ready now. I have my 23 in a garage with 2 space heaters going (big garage). I have done layup in the past on milder days but like Island says the cure basically stops when the temp drops. This can really slow you down.

I have made nice gadgets like heated glue boxes where I store my stuff so it can be pumped out and so it mixes warm. You can use lights on small jobs to bring up surface temps. Either way you just fight the cold. Also a big thing seems to be you always fight the moisture in the slab of your unheated garage. For me it seems hard to make it hot and dry even on milder days.

Enjoy your winter and put the extra time into prep

[JohnB]

If your going to spend all that time and money, wait till it's above 50 degrees, 60 would be better. Put a thermoneter in your fridge, it should say about 40 degrees, mix a little epoxy up, stick it in the fridge, and you will see what your up against. I have heard of some people keeping the epoxy in the house at 70 degrees, mixing and working with it, but given all the time and money to do this, I would wait.

[Tashmoo2]

Thank you for advice. My gut says to do it now and get it done but common sense says to wait. Epoxy is too expensive and time too presious to mess it up

[JohnB]

I had to clean up an "epoxy gone bad" one time, it is a mess, and if your trying to penetrate wood, you really want to get it right the first time. I have put epoxy in cold water here in Florida to slow it down in the summer, I think you could do the same in cooler weather using warm water. Everything I have read says below 50, it stops the reaction.

[joey]

I buy epoxies from John Greer at Areomarine in California and it kicks as long as it's 37 degrees.I used some last week with temps in the mid 40's...no problem.