I finished a rod about 2 months ago. It has an 8 inch butt wrap followed by the decal and signature. All have several coats of LS Supreme and the finished rod was very nice. A gift to my brother. He fished it for the first time 2 weeks ago. We fished in very hot and humid weather. Temps in the mid 90's and bright sun. After the first day of fishing nothing seemed unusual, but on the second day as we were boating to our spot I noticed the epoxy had split and opened about a 1/2 inch gap over the "tie off" wrap between the butt wrap and the decal. Not only did the epoxy split but it separated as though the butt wrap had shrunk and part of the tie off wrap went with the butt wrap and the rest went with the decal. Everything still seems to be tightly bonded and no other evidence of a problem can be seen. I will post a picture or 2 in the miscellaneous catagory and call the pix epoxy split1 and epoxy split 2. Any help on cause and prevention would be appreciated.

There was a thread on this not too long ago. Do a search and I am sure you could find it. There were many suggestions as to what might cause this.

Might be good to find out if you both used the same thread or finish?
Could be a thread shrinkage problem.
Or other common denominaters causing the problem
He had left his in a car whie it was hot.

Steve,
The post made a few weeks ago was using my ThreadMaster, this fellow is using LS Supreme, I know of 2 other builders who have had this happen with FlexCoat....it's obviously not the finish....very interesting.

Andy Dear
Lamar Fishing Products

I am having trouble getting the picyures downloaded. I'll try again later

I have had the same thing happen. The first time I was told it was tension to tight, But then I was told it was I did my cutoff to straight to stager it and comb the thread out prior to over wrapping.I have not had it happen since I did the uneven trim and combing of the thread and have left it in extream heat for a week. The car with the windows up in Florida.

If this is the same one of the pic that was posted earlier, I'm still at a loss. There have been other jobs that split like this, but not nearly as much as yours did. I've never heard of it until just a couple of weeks ago. I've been playing with this a bit since I first heard of it and haven't been able to duplicate it, which is really chapping my hide. I've tried using as much tension as possible (which I tend to do on my buttwrap tieoffs anyways.. they hum when I wrap them), wetting thread first (trying to get a rawhide effect), contaminating finish to mess with it, contaminating the blank to try and create "slippage", adding heat, adding cold, and various combinations. as well as other half baked stuff I can come up with, and have come up with zilch. This is one of those things that occasionally happens with materials where, "What CAN cause this failure?.... Any one of a few possibilities or combination thereof, based on testing, what evidence exists and theory" and, "What WILL cause this failure?.. Nothing, based on lack of duplication, lack of evidence and theory", which usualy means that when a certain combination of specific conditions, some possibly yet unknown or at least previously thought of as not important (did a bat fly through a cold front in Alabama during the last full moon while a redneck boiled a pork chop in redeye gravy while picking his nose), exist in perfect harmony, stuff can go wrong, but trying to quantify and/or duplicate it can be next to impossible.

Stuff like this can drive you nuts, no matter where it happens.

What threads were you guy's using? Brand, type. color ect.

I used Guderbrod size A regular thread with 3 coats of Flexcoat CP followed by 3 coats of LS Supreme each coat applied 24 hours after the last, including the CP. I was also fishing an identical rod in the same boat and mine did not have the problem. Both rods had not been outdoors until this trip and while he traveled from another location than myself, both rods were contained in a rod case, indoors until the actual travel time. Once we met for the fishing adventure the rods were practically side by side from Friday night until Sunday when the problem was discovered.

CLosed wrap, threads slipped on teh blank, tension on teh threads was lengthwise on teh blank. This looks like what I called "slippage" when I do my tie offs on closed wraps with no CP. Why it happened after the CP & epoxy, I don't know, but I almost guarantee it's from the tension of the threads on butt wraps.

I have also had one of these failures. My failure occurred on a polished blank with no finish on the blank and relatively high tension on the tie off thread. Common to all reported so far. Most have occurred recently in several brands of finish. All have occurred in near proximity to tie off bands. All cracks circumferential. All over thread. Visibly all cracks look highly similar.

I would like to know if all who have had a failure use flaming with a torch as a step in their procedure. Was acetone used in all cases? I tend to use more than one brand of finish on most rods. Are there any reasons to stop this practice. Could there be a chance that the different resins could create his stress levels in the finish during the cure?

We are doing something to cause this. I really would like to know. Why are all recent? I have looked back in the archives and have not seen any old reports of this cracking.

Roger Seider mentions in his presentations that finish "will do strange things in the first few minutes pertaining to moving around on its own during the initial catalization stage". When we use multiple coats of finish we could be laying down layers of finish of differnent thichkness each with different curing cycles. Some of the boundarys may be setting up areas that will possess different tensionional properties. The tie off area with muliiple areas may be firmly anchored and basically immovable whereas the other areas may not have the same anchoring effect. If you take a look at some of those mixing cups we use after the finish sets up some will be flexible for a number of days and some will snap immediately. I am beginning to think that flaming of the surface may heat underlying layers to unacceptable temperatures. We may be introducing micro cracks between layers when we flame.

I thin my first coat of finish with acetone for penetration, a very light coat, and flame nearly everything. I am going to tone down my acetone use and flaming in the tie off area until someone gets to the bottom of this.

Gon Fishn



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2006 01:33PM by Bill Stevens.

Bill,
There is never a need for acetone use....ever for the purpose of thinning. The idea that a thinned finish penetrates better is nonsense...faster maybe, but not really better to any appreciable degree. Ralph O'Quinn has said this for 20 years, and he IS a formulator.
And yes, as a re-seller of finish, I would advise you to stop mixing brands/formulas for a number of reasons, there is no need for that either.....they all work well, my advise would be to chose one formula and stick with it.
I spoke with my chemist about this anomolie today as well, and he said it very well could be a measuring/mixing error, that causes a weak spot in the cured coating. Thread tension, heat and acetone do seem to be the common denominators here.
Whatever the cuase, the only way to figure it out is be able to reproduce the cracking on a regular basis, then start eliminating variables to see when it stops.

I


Andy Dear
Lamar Fishing Products



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2006 02:27PM by Moderator.

Acetone + heat + epoxy = brittle epoxy.

You fellows are not looking in the right place. It's not the epoxy and it's not the thread, it's all the terrible things people do and add to their epoxies that cause these problems.

There will be an article in the volume 9 #5 issue of RodMaker that explains exactly what solvents and/or heat do to the structural make up of these epoxies.


................

MY reason for acetone in first coat of finish

Not thinning.

A heavy duty boat rod with an extensive underwrap thread + seven boat guides + tip wrap.

Mix three table spoons of each part.

Application rotating and static

Mix time two minutes - pan pour - let sit three minutes air removal apply with brush

I need about 15 minutes free flowing working time. Shop can be quite hot - 90 F

The first finish application normally lets me go over the rod two times. Start at butt all the way to tip including between feet.

Let soak in until thread pattern can be seen

Go back over entire rod with flood over top of guide wraps and fill tunnels.

I do not want the finish starting to get tacky

Use 4% by volume acetone to extend working time

Information has been provided that OEMs thin finish with acetone up to 6% by volume for first coat operations

Normally I apply two more coats with no acetone.

I think the bad things I have developed in my practice are over heating with a torch and mixing products.

If the recommended percentage of acetone proves to be a real no no I will change my work practice.

Gon Fishn

It's a no-no. Maybe not according to the OEM people, but according to the epoxy formulators.

Rather than using Acetone to try and extend working time, I think I'd mix up two batches instead. I don't really understand your application technique, but it's yours, not mine. When you get to the part where you allow the rod to stand until the epoxy has soaked in until the thread can be seen, mix a fresh batch and then use that for your second stage.

Nothing good is going to come from putting a solvent into an epoxy. A lot of guys do it without any apparent trouble, but quite a few others get bit.

.........

I have had this happen two to three years ago when I was first using U 40. Talked to someone who talked to Ralph OQuinn never got a clear response to what caused it. I have never nor would I ever added anything to any finish I was going to use. I used an alcohol lamp on flex coat for bubbles, and nothing when I used U40 and got cracks in both. I don't want to keep going on on this but finally someone else has had it happen. Could there be a truth to the threads underneath being cut to sharply and not at an angle and combed out like DOC SKI said to do in his weave DVD causing this?

Epoxy, well measured and mixed, is a very stable material. And, fishing rods don't really flex that much. Not over a short area anyway.

I'm not going to say what might cause it, because frankly, I don't know. But I do know that solvents and heat change some things that most epoxy formulators would rather you didn't change.

Somebody would have to duplicate the problem intentionally in order to really say for sure what causes such a thing.


..............

I had this problem a few weeks ago, kinda started all this talk about cracking epoxy. To recap my problem I had done a closed buttwrap with gudebrod and madeira thread that had 2 coats of 811 straight from the bottle each coat drying 24 hours, then 2 coats of threadmaster over top each coat drying about 24 hours before the next. The epoxy cracked in one long crack that wound around the whole blank and then some. I had decided to cut it off and redo it going against alot of really good advise to repair and recoat, the reason to cut it off for me was simply to try to figure out what I did to cause this. I finished another rod the same way after this one and it came out perfect then spent a full day trolling for tuna and getting beaten up horribly and it looks like a million bucks. I really tried to figure this out as I carefully cut the wrap off and I think I have some ideas as to what I did wrong. I found the old piece of tin foil I used for this wrap to check the leftover TM finish and that stuff is crystal clear and flexible and couldnt be removed from the tin foil with out tearing it, this for me ruled out the TM mix, thankfully since I love this stuff more than anything ever ever ( thank you Andy ). I studied the tie off where this occurred and found the crack went all the way down to the thread as I could stick a dental pick in the crack and actually fray the exposed thread...wierd. This makes me think I had an adhesion problem at that spot. As I cut the tieoff off I found that for some reason I must have been devoid of brain function when I wrapped because this tie off was 3 layers thick! Why i did 3 layers Ill never know., the plan was 2 layers but I did 3. I think what may have happened was I did the first tie off fairly tight and then CP'd that layer. Then 2 more layers each getting cp'd before being wrapped over by the next, dumb, I know. I think what this created was multiple layers of thread with differing amounts of tension that were cp'd so no epoxy could penetrate anything causing a little san andreas fault line in my tie off. I couldnt really find any signs of the wrap itself slipping as the patterns looked to be where they were to begin with, which is still confusing to me. I fully agree with the acetone and heat are bad camp, Ive never used acetone, never thinned anything for that matter, and dont flame or heat very often usually in the winter only and at that sparingly. I think in my case the fact that I used 3 layers with cp and that I wrapped the closed wrap pretty tight caused my problem. I am in the process of finishing the rewrap now, this time I scuffed the buttwrap area first then wrapped the closed wrap, I then used unthinned 811 over the wrap to hold it down before the tie off not sure if this helps or hurts really. Then I did the tie offs on both ends 1 layer only being sure to not trim the threads at too sharp an angle and combed it out good. I then covered the whole thing in 1 light coat of Threadmaster unthinned left to dry 2 days then 2nd layer tie off for aesthetics, going to finish tonight with 1 maybe 2 coats of TM if needed. I am in no way smart enough to really find out what happened in this case but I am POSITIVE it was me and not the products I used. We may never know what specifically caused this but I have learned alot from making this mistake and strive to do better each rod I build. Hope this helps someone.

Have a great weekend everyone!
Scott Gadsby

Which direction did you do the tie offs? All the same, one one direction, the other the opposite direction.

I know for a fact teh tension from threads in a closed butt wrap can be enough to cause the pattern to squeeze together...slip. CP does NOT allow epoxy to penetrate, maybe the CPO didn't penetrate to the blank. When I had the patterns slip, the only thing I noticed is that teh first pattern at teh end "bubbld" up...or what I called Blew up.

[www.rodbuilding.org]#

Billy,
All three layers of the tieoff were butt to tip. Now that I think about it I always wrap everything butt to tip, its alot easier for me to wrap this way because I hold the spool of thread in my hand as I wrap and coming down the blank tip to butt makes me use my left hand and feels kinda wonky, I know, im wierd... I think you are right though as this slippage probably played a role in the crack happening along with the cp sealing everything from the epoxy, and possibly since I used madeira for the tie off, maybe the silicone coating lowered the adhesion to the wrap below it and to the cp on top of it?? This is a real stumper huh? Funny side note: I had rewrapped the butt wrap after cutting it off and as I was doing the tieoff I started cutting the wrap threads and the whole thing shrunk up maybe 3mm with a loud creak just like you said, the resulting puffy ends of the wrap body looked horrible and totally ruined the wrap, had to cut it off too... Maybe my tension is on the tight side?? I am getting alot faster at closed wraps because of all this LOL, my silly phish-head coworker better like this rod as it has given me sleepless nights and heartburn.

Scott Gadsby