New Glue

I was coming to the end of my current glue supply and decided this was a good time to review it. Until now I had been using a pre-gel mix that was mixed at a 1:1 ratio. This aspect was good, but it was also a rather expensive way to go. I have also had nagging doubts about the product, not that I have had any problems, but it seemed support was limited should I stumble. I started looking into using EPG epoxy and glue powder but they didn't have pumps and I was concerned about mixing ratios. So I have changed over to West System. I went and spoke to the technical guy for 10 minutes and he had concerns about EPG as well, he quoted a low value on some parameter that I can't recall as I didn't understand it at the time. He also threw in a few freebies in the form of hand cleaners, manuals, glue spreaders. So now I have a 12 litre bag of glue powder and 12 litres combined of epoxy resin & hardner.

So I came home and read the book. It strongly recommended making a trial batch to get used to the pumps and mixing etc.

First thing I noticed is that a single pump produces a lot of glue, more so that most job I am currently doing requires. This has me concerned a bit as I can see me doing lots of jobs where 1 pump is going to be too much, or not being quite enough.

Anyway decided not to waste the 'trial' batch and used if filling old bolt holes left over from removing the frames.

This was the first time I have had the glue go off while I was still working it, and I also noticed a lot of heat which I wasn't getting from EPG. I had spread the glue out a bit, but needed to spread it out much more.

Todays photo shows frames 6 & 7 attached, 7 was done a couple of days ago, forgot to post it.

The stem is just balanced, need to do a bit more preparation before fitting that.

Tomorrow I hope to get frames 4 & 5 fitted.