: Last night I prepared for my first exopy session gluing the butt joints of my
: tern 14. I laid out the tape, mylar, bricks, etc., donned safety glasses,
: gloves, turned the music up and began pumping the resin without incident.
: I then pumped the hardener and heard two burps and saw an interruption of
: the stream. Beleiving that this might have put my ratio off I closed shop
: for the evening. My question is this - does anyone know where I can get
: accurate plastic (disposable - ie, cheap) graduated cups to allow mixing
: from as little as 1 1/2 ox. to 12 oz? System three sells 14 ounce
: graduated cups but they note that the accuracy may be questionable since
: the cups are rolled paper.

: I was so ready to start but thought a little more patience was in order.

: any thoughts? Thanks

Ray:

I built two Pygmy boats recently, and the pumps never stopped burping - but did perform somewhat more reliably when I pre-heated the stuff for thin seal-coats.

Seems even in my 70-degree living room, System Three standard is just too viscous for the pumps, so cups or syringes do make sense if you're worried about it (and you probably should be).

For the record, I managed both boats with only one inital incident - learned to pump slowly, anticipate the burps, let the plunger rise a bit, then pump the remainder of the stroke. Pygmy kindly supplied me with four re-usable graduated cups as a backup, which I used frequently for small batches.

The butt-joints seemed to me to be the trickiest part of the kit to get right; there are other issues critical to the appearance of the boat that take place in this step, too. It's unfortunate that it's also the first thing first-timers encounter with Pygmy kits.

Rick Hastings