A little while ago I posted about a problem I had with “orange peel” on the filler coats of epoxy. I thought I would give you an update on the results & my impressions.

I wet sanded the previous coats back fairly hard, even to the glass in several places to get rid of all the dimples etc so the whole hull was freshly washed, scrubbed & sanded with 80grit on a fairing board.
After a few days it was time to put on the new coats after everything had thoroughly dried (I even used the heat gun to be sure).

The first coat on the 1st half of the hull was done with a foam roller (same as last time) & then tipped off as I went with a foam brush, it started to orange peel. I did the 2nd half & the same thing. I went back over the whole hull with the foam brush but within minutes of getting a smooth surface it would orange peel again quite badly. There were quite a few small (2mm) deeper dimples appearing as well.

With the 2nd coat I swapped to a short nap mohair roller & it was marginally better. I noticed there was a small patch of deep dimples in one area so I used a standard bristle brush dipped in a bit of epoxy to clean up that area, it was a little bit thick but that area came up beautifully. Hmmm. Both rolled coats were pretty thin.

On the next coat I used the brush & worked it on well over about 1 1/2 hand spans at a time with a thorough criss-cross pattern & then tipped off parallel with the keel. After I had finished the one half I went back & tipped it off again, it still didn’t come up all that flash.

On the 2nd side I did the same thing only I didn’t go back over it & I used a slightly thicker coat & by the time I had finished it was glassy smooth.
After an hour or so, I decided to do another full thick coat while I was winning & it came out beautifully, no runs or sags but super smooth.

So, for me at least, it seems the roller is the offender with the epoxy I’m using, it doesn’t like thin coats or being reworked once it’s down even after a few minutes. It seems that if an orange peel effect is laid down with the roller initially, then that is what you get regardless of what you do to it afterwards, at least in my situation.

The temperature in my garage at the moment is about 23C & the epoxy I’m using is Kinetix, which is made here in Australia by the same people who make the West system under license & similar to the 207 but a little less viscous. It’s quite popular with surfboard makers.

The only thing left to try now is a thick coat with a roller......nah!!

Glen G