Hello Eveyone,

I am looking to your experience and guidance to help me diagnose a problem that I just experienced.

A few days ago I finished building three spinning rods for the Grandchildren for Christmas. The guides on each rod were wrapped with FishHawk, Variegated, A thread, with complementing metallic A thread trim wraps. Each rod was wrapped with a different color thread for each grandchild, Red, Green and Blue. All of the wraps had 2 coats of CP and allowed to dry overnight before the epoxy was applied.

Everything was looking good until I began to apply the epoxy. Some of the guides on two of the rods, the Green and Blue, started showing smokey looking streaks along the length of the wrap. The intensity of the smokey stain varied in each spot and none of them covered the entire wrap. And a few of the spots were just that, spots with no pattern or direction, just small spots match head size spots. When finished and dried, the wraps looked like they had soot or smoke from a fire on them. Following the advise from Tom in his recent Epoxy video, the epoxy went on smooth and even with no bubbles, so no heat or flaming was applied to them.

The rods still look good and the grand kids were thrilled with them. But as a learning builder, I am hoping to learn what caused the smokey spots and how to avoid (or maybe purposely use) them in future builds.

Thanks in advance for your help

What I think you are seeing is trapped moisture.
I'm going to guess you used CP and that it wasn't completely dry when the finish went on.

Are the spots actually dark colored?

.........

If you flamed the wraps with a lighter - to get rid of fuzziness - you may have gotten to close to the thread and burned it ???

Bill - willierods.com

Barry

An old W C Wells comedy scene has Wells as a policeman in an amusement park. A small child tugs on Wells' trousers and announces that he cannot find his parents. Wells looks down and says "There are so many places they could be hiding!" Similar situation for CP and epoxy; there are so many possibilities for both the CP and the finish. My guesses in ascending order of probability are: contamination of the wraps before or after CP application; incomplete CP coverage; or CP not thoroughly cured.

If the problem does not exist for the red rod, what other than thread color was different about the red rod's build? Different days and temperatures or humidity? More or less CP cure time? Different tools or brushes? In what order were the rods built; was the red rod first or last?

Got to suspect something that did or did not happen to the red rod is key.

I use the variegated a lot. 2 coats of Chromeseal CP Never had a problem. Had problems with this thread when used U40 color preserver.
What brand CP did you use?
Buzz

If the smokey areas are whiteish, it could be amine blush. try heating the subject wraps with a hair dryer and see if they disappear.