Dow Blew board melt down, NO! - 2011

March 2011 - At Marina Cortez Harbor Island, San Diego, CA
At Fiberlay in San Diego with my 91 Jeep Wrangler parked out front.

So at Fiberlay I was told that it would be OK to use the Fiberlay resin filler for the corners to make radiuses. Seeing as they were helpful in the other tips they gave me I went with it.


  Now I must say the last two times I was there at the counter there were different men and each of those times they were less than friendly. One was almost rude but I could say standoffish.
 What happened was I used the resin filler and it melted the Dow Blew board Foam! So I should know better in that we bought a two part epoxy just for doing the refer because of this very issue. For some reason I thought that it was the different hardener or liquid resin that would melt the foam when actually they are the same only one is a paste. But what do I know? We have never done this before. Most we have done is fiber glass up a couple surf boards. So I was maybe overly dependent on their advice.
 Now I have read the Fiberlay course and thought we were set.
Fiberlay - How To - A Fiberglass Seminar/Training Booklet.
Yikes! The foam is melting!
  The area that did not melt was the first part we did which mislead me into thinking things were going fine. Now that we thought about it, that are is the fiber glass separator panel and there was spray foam on top of the Dow Blew board(DBB) so it was not affected. There the resin paste hardened and will not come out. That is OK because it did not do any damage.
Melted foam and resin paste on edges.
 So we had to quickly remove the paste from the refer.
 At first I was really bombed thinking we may need to pull out the DBB from the refer and start over. That is not the case so we move on.   
 Of course I sat and pouted and was wo-as-poor-me for a while.

 I think the part that really got me pissed off was I called them at the Fiberlay in San Diego and asked them about it. As disappointed and upset as I was (the sky is falling) I was nice on the phone. They said oh ya that happens. When I asked for the solution he said I don’t know try bondo.
Now come on, bondo! That’s for cars, metal and any way I have worked with bondo and it is not the solution.

 We then called Fiberlay corporate tech support and they said we would need to make our own epoxy paste and told us how.  
Fiberlay 1-800-942-0660

 So now we need to fix the Dow Blew board(DBB). We will try using the spay foam on top of the DBB to fill the areas that were melted. Some are as deep as ½ inch but only a couple and not a much of an are. Also most of the areas have two inches of  DBB so a little less is not a big deal. Most are ¼ or so of an inch deep. Lets see how the spray foam will work on this. It is an R-5 just as the DBB is but getting it flat will be the issue here. I will spray the foam and Debbie will try to level it off as best as she can. The next phase is to lay fiber glass, so the area needs to be of a finished quality.
 If this doesn't work we can fill the areas with the spray foam and use a fiber glass panel for the bottom to make it flat if need be. Any way it looks ugly but the sky is not falling and it is all fixable.

 We will go back to Fiberlay San Diego to purchase the epoxy paste materials so that all our chemicals are the same for the project. We have already purchased the two part epoxy, hardener etc from Fiberlay so we want to keep it all the same.

 If we had it to do over again we would only speak with Kevin at Fiberlay.

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