Minor epoxy miscalculation turned out fine

One of the wisest investments I've made in this whole boatbuilding project was the $30 I spent on a kitchen scale at K-Mart. My "close calls" with epoxy miscalculation basically evaporated.

That is, until yesterday afternoon.

Something I didn't mention in yesterday's post, was that when I ran out of epoxy, I'd upturned the resin & measured out 144 g. Silvertip epoxy, measured by weight is mixed in a ratio of 1 part resin to 0.44 parts hardener.

Here's a photo of the kitchen scale I'd purchased at K-Mart.

Taking the 144 g of resin, and multiplying it by 1.44 meant that I needed to add hardener until the overall weight equalled 207 – 208 g. (144 x 1.44 = 207.36).

So, I upturned what was left of the hardener into the mixing cup. Unfortunately, the combined weight had only reached 194 g when the hardener ran out completely. I was 13.36 g short.

Marine epoxy is expensive. "Besides," I thought, "I've had closer calls than this with estimated measurements." I decided to mix it for 3x longer than I usually do (6 minutes, since I usually mix for 2 minutes), and then just use it.

It worked just fine.