I seem to be having problems with fisheyes in alot of my work lately. Can anyone tell me how to fix the problem.
Thanks,
Steve

Not much information to go on. True fisheyes are generally caused by some type of silicone in the work area. Silicone can get airborne and travel far and wide. Have you brought any cleaners, polishes or coatings into your shop lately? Sprayed any sort of automotive tire or vinyl protectant just outside?

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

Make sure there is no silicon sprays or waxes in your work area, always clean the blank with a light liquid detergent mixed with water an rinse off with bottled water. Some tap water has containments like iron in it. Denatured Alcohol is a good drier. You should always wash your hands before and during your wrapping, oils from your hands is a great contributer to contaminating threads wraps. This should eliminate 99% of all fish eye problems

Good Wraps Bob

Good Morning Steven,

I would add to what Bob and Tom said that your thread might also be your culprit. If you have changed thread recently and are using thread from madeira and others that are designed for sewing machines, that can result in fisheyes. Using color preserver can eliminate that source of your problem.

Mike Blomme

This may be another thing to consider:

I noticed a post down the board yesterday about what type of pull thread to use -

Many people use braid -

Some braids are coated with materials identified as Teflon and Silicone based.

I use braid to pull thread tags - Power Pro

I noticed if the braid was not stripped a small tad of stuff would appear at the place the tag was pulled under the thread. The thread wrap effectively wipes anything that is on the surface of the pull loop and lays it at the point of pull unders. I noticed that these guide wraps did not appear with clean edges at 200 rpm.

I have a dull pair of scissors that is used to "scrape off the outer coating of the Power Pro before using it to pull tag under. I just pull the thread across the edge of the scissors a couple of time to remove any surface coatings present. Quite a bit of material will come off the line when reasonably new.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2009 01:19PM by Bill Stevens.

Mike made a excellent point point on sewing threads

Good Wraps Bob

And although this is possibly stating the obvious, be careful what you use to measure and mix your epoxy. Medical syringes and medical medicine cups are often silicone treated. The syringes and cups sold by Flexcoat are NOT treated. Also, if you pour your finish onto some type of plastic after mixing, make sure that isn't treated. (Using aluminum foil is probably the best bet.)

Steve just a small question, Are you doing or using anything differently that you did in the past. Hey guys lots of good info for the new builders

Good Wraps Bob

Steven,

When spraying nitrocelluose lacquer, fisheyes can develop in the presence of silicone. Anti-fisheye additives are available. I add them routinely as Insuance when spraying musical instruments. Check with nitrocelluose lacquer supppliers or Stewart - Macdonald ( www.stewmac.com) who can comment if these will work in your system. Stew-mac can also supply these.

Dave Burley

Steve:

I was having trouble with fisheyes on my second coat of FlexCoat. I talked to a local rod builder, and he gave me some good information, and some bad information. I finally called FlexCoat, and got the straight story about the problem, and how to fix it once it appears.

The fisheyes are caused by some sort of oil contamination. I don't know where you build your rods, but unlike some of the guys, I am building in a room in my house. My contamination could have come from many sources including cooking oil. Whatever your building situation is, you have to eliminate or at least minimize these sources of oil contamination. Once a fisheye appears in wet finish, you need to let the viscocity of the finish to thicken up a little, and you will be able to "pull" the thickend finish over the fisheye.

I was amazed at the amount of information I received from one phone call to FlexCoat.