I was bored waiting on my next project, so I decided to put fish length markers on my rods (all of them) just did a simple 3 wrap. Unfortunately, I only have one drying motor and ten rods to do. My question is, how can I speed up the drying time on the epoxy? I did a couple searches and unless I'm overlooking, I didn't see anything that specifically deals with this subject. Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Epoxy does not dry, it cures. It can be accelerated some by warming.

Right, get the area a bit warmer.

For any 18F increase or decrease in temp from about 70F, you will either halve or double the set and cure time. Get things up to about 90 and you're good to go in about half the time.

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

And don't forget that you should only need to rotate them for 2-3 hours for them to reach a no sagging point. They don't need to rotate the entire time.

There are some people who turn their drying rods by hand... you could set up some simple supports - apply finish as you normally do, then move the rod to the drying rack and keep turning each rod on the drying rack every couple of minutes to start, while you are applying finish on the next rod...

or you can pick a couple of cheap dryers and do a few rods at a time - I believe mudhole just released some inexpensive ones...

Thanks to all for the suggestions, since it seems I'm getting more involved in this craft, I'll have to better organize my room for additional work stations. I've already looked at Mudhole's RDS and will get a couple soon.
Thanks again, it is greatly appreciated.

Arthur,
If you want to dry more than one rod at a time, you can use a drum dryer:

[www.rodbuilding.org]

I have been making these for a while and I can make you the complete unit; or parts of the dryer and you can finish it yourself.

The dryer uses a single DC gear motor to rotate the main square shaft and you can dry 12 rods on the dryer at a time.
The picture is just for illustratioln to illustrate all of the parts of the dryer. The actual dryer uses a main center shaft that is a few inches longer than the longest rod you would like to dry.

If interested, drop me an e-mail -- If you want to make all of the parts yourself, I will tell you how to do the job yourself.

hflier@comcast.net

Roger Wilson

What's the minimum time you wait between coats?

Mike -
Apply one coat correctly and you don't have to apply a 2nd coat.

Otherwise, 3 hours should be plenty of drying time for the 2nd coat.

Second coat, after the first is "tack free" however long that takes. Shoulb less the 4-5 hours unless mixture is wrong.

Either that
Or use Permagloss That is fast and you can put on a coat ABOUT every 15 - 20 mim's

Bill - willierods.com