I epoxied the guides on a rod that I'm building and I have a problem.

I put the guides on with 3 seperate batches of Flex Coat. One batch has failed to harden, it's three days and still tacky. I know of, and thought that I had taken all the precautions about precise mixing but it's too late now. Have any of you had this "sticky" problem? Short of removing the epoxied wraps is there anything that I can do?

I tried heating the epoxy with a hair dryer. Didn't help.

What will happen if I cover the tacky epoxy with another coat?

Thanks in advance
Don

It happened to me once, I am not sure what I did. I thought I mixed everythinng etc..... I did a search and found previous threads where others have had that experience as well. Short answer is put another coat of finish on the rod, and it will cure.

Good Luck!

Don, If you do a search for Tacky Epoxy or Tacky finish and select ALL dates, you will probably get a few days worth of reading. Scroll down a little and you will find a thread on that exact thing form a day or so ago. Just put another thin coat and you should be OK

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

Don,
The only good solution is to remove the guide, take off the epoxy, clean up the blank, rewrap and recoat.

You can use a heat gun to futher soften the epoxy, cut the thread on the guide side with a razor, take off the guide and then use xylene to clean up the blank of the tacky epoxy.

Finally, rewrap the guides, and recoat the guides.

Note:
When mixing the guide coating, get an exact 1:1 mix of resin and hardner. Also, mix for two minutes.

Many many problems of tacky coating are caused by insufficient mixing of the resin and hardner.

Take care
Roger

I disagree with roger! I have found and others here have too that if you mix a new batch and coat over the old one it will harden. Try one guide if you want to prove it.

Here's my two cents.....I have had to rewrap a rod that I delivered that had a coat of finish on the guides that never hardened, even though I put a coat on top that did harden. Under constant use, the guides all became loose. My soultion: I have switched to Threadmaster, I warm the two parts up for 5-10 minutes in hot water, mix exactly 1 dram of each minimum, stir three minutes (with a timer) pour out into a foil lined glass tray, hit the mixture with a flame to eradicate bubbles, and apply. I have never had a failure yet. And, unless I'm building the biggest of rods, I apply one coat of TM. I tried the multiple coats of FlexCoat Lite, and found that it was three times the work and thee times the chance for problems. I don't see the need to try TM Lite.

I had plenty of success with the FlexCoat, but I also had some problems with tackiness. Maybe it was me, but using the process I outlined with TM, I haven't had a problem at all.

I've had mixed results applying newly-mixed finish over a tacky finish, but wouldn't discount it as a solution. I only have time to build rods during the fall and early winter, so I am willing to wait days and even weeks to allow a finish to cure since I can't fish a rod immediately after completion anyway. My current rod-building room is usually on the cold side, so curing seems to take place slowly over a 3 or 5 day period, and even longer using Flec-Coat Lite. How important is the rod to your collection or to your client? If you're in a hurry to get the rod on the water, go a head and try adding a another coat of finish. If the rod is a special presentation, I'd go with Roger & Fran's advice.

One other thing... I think most of the failures I've experienced were caused by improperly mixing the finish on the sides of the mixing cup. I always make sure I "scrape" the sides of the cup several times in one direction, then the other, to ensure all of the finish is included; and I always mix more than I know I'll use.

I don't think that I missed the 50/50 mixture proportions as I know it's critical. I use denatured alcohol to thin the flex coat and I'm wondering if somehow that may have caused the mix to come up tacky. Any thoughts?

Don