Exotherm

1269 days and 1983 hours

I thought I would get more time in today, however I was up pretty late last night and after Kim and I go play tennis at 9PM I will definitely head for bed. On Wednesdays when they all go off to church I like to think I can get at least 2 hours in, not this week. I was touching up the Hstab with some micro when I ran into some exotherm. The glue used for laying down the fiberglass is a combination of epoxy resin and a hardening agent. They come in separate containers and they don't do anything until they are mixed together. There are a lot of different kinds and brands. I use this one because that is what the plans say to do and with as much experimenting I am doing there is no need to experiment with everything. Anyway the combining of the epoxy and the hardener and the fiberglass is why it is called composite material. The crazy feature of the epoxy material is that it can exotherm. That is if too much is mixed together it can heat up harden and even catch fire. Tonight I was going to slow and I had a bit of a batch in a container. It got hot to the touch. Then it started to harden very quickly. This stuff is supposed to take 24 hours to completely harden. It got to where I had to throw it away. There have been fires and even people killed. It makes me want to go check the trash can one more time. The stuff was HOT!