Cold Winter and resin/bondo/rondo question

[Rambow13]

I am very new to this and everything I had read talks about good ventolation and warm enviroment being best for this process.

I have finishing up on some of my Pep pieces and was looking at the next step, the only problem is I live in MN and its already an average of 40 degrees out and falling fast.

My garage is not insulated, however, I do have a fish house and a space heater that I could work to get to the desired temp, and venilate afterwards.

My question comes, what are the draw backs to Resin/Bondo/Rondo in the cold, is it just a slower process? Are there alternatives that can be used in the cold?

I read through a lot of threads on the subject of resin/bondo and didnt see mention, and tried the search so please to hate my noob question!

 

[Carpathia]

Cold does have negative effects on resin/filler. The absolute minimum temperature that Bondo recommends for resin and body filler is 40 degrees F. Even at that, the curing process must be monitored, and in many cases, helped along. Since it is head that cures the resin/filler, cold greatly slows down the process, and can even halt it all together.

To overcome this, there are a few things you can do. The fish house with a space heater (or even in the garage with a space heater) would work. I've resined/glassed a piece and placed it under a card table draped with a drop cloth in my garage and blasted that with a space heater before and that worked fine.

Another method could be to build a hot box. Essentially, this is a box, possibly insulated, big enough to hold the pep piece and an incandescent light. The light will create the heat necessary to start the curing process. If the box is insulated, all the better.

One more method would be to periodically blast the curing piece with a heat gun or a hot hair dryer. This will keep the piece warm enough to continue to cure, but requires a lot more attention. If you use a heat gun, be careful not to put too much heat in one place. I have recently discovered an area that I used a heat gun on that, even after a few days, was still soft and sticky.

I hope this helps, and good luck.

Oh, and in the future, questions like this should be posted in the Help! series threads in the NOOB forum.

 

[Rambow13]

Thank you! That answers it perfectly.