Thinning Epoxy cement

[Daryle Holmstrom]

The last batch of epoxy head cement was to thick, thin with acetone?

[nomlasder]

Try MEK

[Philster]

Temperature matters. I would recommend a warm water bath, if in squeeze bottles, or wrapping in warm moist washcloth if in plunger bottles. This losens it up a little and can even resurrect bottles that have gone "grainy" on you. It can affect curing time, but the final result will still be hard and I never noticed any premature yellowing in thousands of dozens. I try not to mess with additives in already volatile crap. We poison ourselves enough already:eek:

[James Mello]

So I'm making an assumption that you're doing this for epoxy headed flies :)

Temp matters as well as formulation. The warmer it is, the faster it will set, *regardless* of thinning. It's kinda like concrete in that it's a catalyst based curing rather than a drying the sets epoxy. Thinning it will delay it as the solution prevents the catalyst from getting in contact with the reagent, but even then.... Futhermore the fast cure stuff will set up pretty darn quick, if it's getting thick fast, move to a 30 minute forumulation.

Finally, another good substitue for epoxy for flies is the epoxy used for coating guides. It's more of a curing resin that epoxy, is relatively thin, and tends to be UV resistant. I believe both All About the Fly as well as Puget Sound Fly Co carry bottles of Flexcoat for this purpose. When using it, please make sure you have a turning device as it takes around 1 hour for it to set up, and around 10 to fully cure.

[Richard]

In my experience, 5 minute epoxy is often relatively thick, which I think you'll find no matter how you try to thin it; I much prefer the thinner, longer working time (assuming you have a drying wheel) of the 30 minute epoxy. :)

[Daryle Holmstrom]

Looks like I'm looking for the 30 minute stuff, Thanks for the replies, have the drying wheel,

http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=21370

Daryle

[FT]

You can thin epoxy cement with acetone or MEK (acetone is better since it evaporates much faster). However, you can get yourself into a real problem by doing so because if the acetone (or MEK) doesn't completely evaporate and excape from the mixed epoxy, you will have voids in it, which is not a good thing. And the faster the cure rate of the epoxy, the worse the problem of the acetone not evaporating becomes.