Hi Grant,

Maybe your thinner was xylene.

After posting the link to that article, I re-read the article, and that author said that xylene had the least effect on cure time.

I didn't worry about 0.25ml of acetone in my warm house, but I'll wait for warmer outside temperatures before applying any xylene-thinned epoxy (thanks for the heads-up, Mark)

Shawn

: I was forced to re-epoxy my S&G coaming and hatch frames a couple of weeks
: ago. The summer heat had started to lift and split the first layer of ply
: (type of ply I used).

: After sanding off old epoxy, I applied 3 consecutive layers of 25%,10%, 5%,
: approx. thinned epoxy. 1st layer disappeared into the ply, 2nd filled any
: grain and 3rd smoothed it off. I applied after work each day (every 24hrs)
: which allowed the sun to heat the coaming and before cooling off at night.
: Temperature here is still 20 - 25 degrees (Celsius). Each batch of left
: over epoxy had fully hardened after 24hrs. Maybe the constant high
: temperature allowed it to cure better then your batch?

: The epoxy I used was AWLCraft 421 thinned with International Epoxy Thinner
: #7. I don't know if it is acetone or xylene. Penetration was great, much
: better then unthinned epoxy on cooling ply. I would say it completely
: saturated the 1st layer of ply (sanded). I varnished a couple of days
: latter which was a mistake since the varnish started to bead. Probably the
: thinner hadn't fully evaporated. A week would have been better. Just
: another of those things that I notice but nobody else will.

: I wouldn't hesitate doing the same to a full kayak next time.

: Cheers
: Grant