REFLECTOR: Hardening Hardener

[Andrew Ellzey]

My hardener stays in a hot box also, and I have bought fresh hardener from Velocity factory twice since I received my kit late 2005. Since All of my major structural layups are complete I decided to try to thin a small batch of  hardener with acetone to see if would still get hard on some cooling duct layups that I was building for my updraft cooling. My first try I added a little two much and it took at least a day and a half to set up. I finally used a 500 watt light to add a little heat to make it truly get hard. I have since done a few more layups using less acetone with better results with no heat needed. I am not a chemical engineer and don't know if this affected the strength of the final product, but since I knew that these pieces weren't structural to my build, I felt that I had nothing to loose but a little fiberglass bid. Try this at your own risk, even though I had good results I still wouldn't condone this on any structural layups on
 your aircraft without checking with the factory or a chemical engineer.

Your results may vary.

Andy Ellzey
XLRG Getting close.




________________________________
From: "KMis178813 at aol.com" <KMis178813 at aol.com>
To: reflector at tvbf.org
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 7:57:20 PM
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Hardening Hardener

Brooke
   I have not worked on my own project for quite a while now but I have been using the hardener from time to time for other projects. I found that the stuff in the Hot Box gets gooey and is not very useful. The stuff at room temp will recover with heat but still remains thick. I recently did some projects at the factory only to notice how nice it is to work with fresh stuff. New stuff is much thinner and makes the cloth absorb quicker with less effort and also lighter. The cost of new hardener compared to everything else we do is cheap. Order in small quantities as you need it and it will always be fresh?? I'm not saying the old stuff is not useable, just the fact that I will not use the old stuff on my plane because of it's properties. FWIW
       Ken

In a message dated 7/25/2009 5:39:04 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, bwolf1 at tds.net writes:
I know this has been addressed before on this forum, but I am  having  
>a problem with hardening hardener.
>
>All of my hardener is less than 2 years old.  It is from the Velocity  
>Factory.  I keep some hardener in a 85 deg box.  I have been away from  
>my project for 3-4 months.  Now, I noticed that it is getting a little  
>thick, somewhat like a gooey tar.  I  tried heating it by putting the  
>gallon jug (with less than a quart of hardener in it) in water at 150  
>deg.  I let the hardener get to about 130 deg for about 15 minutes.   
>The heating certainly made it more viscous, but as it cooled it got a  
>little thick again.....but not as thick as before.  I don't have much  
>confidence in the heating trick.  What did I do wrong?
>
>Just for grins, I checked on two jugs of hardener which have been  
>sitting in my basement for 2 years.  The temp down there stays a  
>pretty constant 70 deg.  Much to my chagrin, both jugs seem to have  
>solidified into a crystalline mush.  Any ideas?!!
>
>Brooke
>
>
>
>
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