Just when you think we are building a boat, we revert to high school wood shop! Our next step is to mix some fairing putty (epoxy resin + hardener + microballons) to fill the holes and gaps between foam planks, as well as a few of the worst sanding faux pas. This will be minimal since we are working on the interior, so fairness is not critical and fairing compound would only add weight. In any case, this means we need to crack open our barrels of MAS resin and hardener. I purchased a fancy drum cradle from an industrial supply company, but I was not very happy with the stability of the 350 lbs barrel on it. It tended to want to stand back up, which seems like an undesirable feature. So I decided to build my own cradles for the 30 gallon resin barrel and 15 gallon hardener barrel.
Here you see the results of a half days effort. The first photo shows how the cradles are constructed. Very simple design, just a 3/4" plywood shell with 2x4 reinforcing the corners and a 2x4 bed to distribute the weight of the barrel.
The second photo shows the barrels happily resting in their new custom-fit cradles. You'll notice I installed two spouts in the 30 gal. drum. The top one allows me o vent the drum. On the smaller hardener drum, the second bung hole (yes that is the real name for it) is the wrong size for my spouts, so I'll just crack it open to vent. In case you are wondering how we got the barrels tipped over without any significant pain and suffering, I strap the cradles to the drum while upright. Then carefully push over, while lifting the bottom of the barrel until it all tips horizontal. It was really quite easy (easier than I expected), and even easier than the specially built cradle I bought. And these cradles are very stable. I have no fear of them tipping in any direction.
You'll notice from the label that we are using MAS epoxy resins. I spent some time comparing the various brands, and went with MAS for several reasons. First, we needed a slow hardener since we are working in a tent with no insulation and no cooling in summertime. Since we have yet to prove our selves in the world of resin, we wanted to maximize our chances of success by using a mix with a longer cure time, and MAS slow hardener is pretty long (about 50% longer than medium hardener, and 2.5x longer than fast hardener). When temperatures start falling, and we are a little more experienced, we will order another set of resin/hardeners, and may go to the medium at that time. Second, they claim that the slow hardener has minimal or no blush (a milky film that forms on the surface of cured epoxy and adds many hours of sanding time). We'll see if this pans out, but sounds good to me for now.
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