My Visit at Forrest Paints (new epoxy resin supplier)

[G-man]

I decided to start a new thread for this topic, but this thread closely follows on the heals of http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3141

I just returned a couple of days ago from a trip to Portland, and on my way back south, I stopped by Forrest Paint in Eugene to pick up a few buckets of epoxy resin and hardener that was waiting for me there. I was fortunate enough to get to meet Greg Davis, and he offered to give me a tour of the facilities, which I gladly took him up on.

I’m happy to report that Forrest Paint is a really top-notch operation. For one thing, they’ve been in the business of making paint and other technical coatings for 30 years. Additionally, they’re huge. The first building we toured was where they mix all of the various resin formulations for solvent based and water based paints. Mixers are sized from small batch units, all the way up to a couple of 3,000 gallon mixers where you have to climb a tall set of stairs in order to be able to look into the mixer. All of the paint resins I saw being mixed were clear, and the color was to be added at a later time. All of the mixed formulations are referred to as ‘resins’, even the water based formulations.

There was a large silver structure attached on the outside of the outside of the mixing building. Greg referred to this structure as the ‘bug tower’. He described that in order to get rid of the VOC’s (volatile organic compounds… the stinky fumes that many chemicals give off) most factories use a VOC ‘scrubber’ that burns the VOC’s as they pass through the scrubber. With the ‘bug tower’, the VOC’s are digested by special microbes (think bacteria) that live within the matrix of the tower. Greg said that this is quite new technology and that Forrrest Paint is quite proud to be one of the first to use the bug tower technology.

Other large buildings housed raw materials, stuff ready to be shipped, spray can filling operations, and a large building dedicated to powder coating manufacturing. A section of one building was stacked to the ceiling with drums and buckets of old paint that had been returned to Forrest Paint for ‘recycling’. Greg indicated to old paint can be reprocessed into new products, and that their company is dedicated to recycling as many products as they possibly can.

Regarding the manufacturing of epoxy resin products, Greg indicated that this is a new product area for Forrest Paint. After a bit of price negotiating over the last few months, Forrest Pain acquired QCM’s resin formulations, and now produce exactly the same epoxy formulations that had been previously available from QCM. Greg said that as much as they’d like to keep the prices in place as they were at QCM, Forrest Paint is realizing that they can’t make and sell the epoxy products at the QCM prices and still keep it economically worthwhile. So, we can expect a price increase of some sort in the near future. For now, the product ID numbers remain the same as they were for the QCM products. Also, Greg confirms that, at least for the present time, he is the primary contact person for ordering epoxy resin products… although in the near future, someone else may take over managing the epoxy products line, as Greg has his hands full already. Small or large orders are welcome. Oh, Greg has been with Forrest Paint company for 28 years, so he really knows a lot about chemical resin formulation.

So, I gotta tell you all that I’m feeling pretty darned relieved after my visit to Forrest Paint. They seem to be as stable as any business entity could be in these unstable times, and their level of quality seems to be about as good as it gets. One thing that really stood out to me was that, out of the many dozens of employees that I saw working there, every single one of them, from people behind the retail counter, to the fork lift driver, they all seemed to enjoy being at work. That all by itself tells me that Forrest Paint runs a real quality operation.

Greg said that Forrest Paint is very open to hearing from its customers regarding changes they might like to see in a product line. I indicated that, as ski and snowboard builders, many of the members at skibuilders.com are interested in anything that advances a particular product’s environmental friendliness. Greg and I talked a bit regarding Entropy products.

So, there you have it. I’ll be sticking with Forrest Paint epoxy because I really liked how the old QCM products performed, and even with a bit of a price increase, I’ll stick with a proven performer. At the same time, I’m sure that Entropy products perform quite well, and I’m real glad that Entropy is working to get away from a petroleum based product. From an environmental perspective, both Entropy and Forrest Paint are doing some good things.

As a little aside, here’s a couple of things that I’ve learned the hard way regarding resins and hardeners. Number one (this is a rather old one that I’ve talked about before, but since there are always new forum members, I’ll repeat it)… heat cure resin systems MUST be cured at the proper temperature for the proper length of time. If not cured properly, the resin will remain weak and brittle. Number two… never let a resin hardener sit in a plastic container (yogurt containers are the worst) for more than a few minutes. If left for more than a few minutes, the hardener absorbs some sort of chemical from the plastic, which then causes the epoxy mixture to turn white and thick as soon as it is mixed. The resultant epoxy mixture will never cure past weak and brittle, no matter how long you heat cure it. Certain plastics are okay, but for simplicity here, I’ll just suggest that all plastic containers be avoided. Metal tins are ideal. I’m including this info because it’s rather easy to blame a resin product for a cure failure, when in reality, there’s a lot of ways to mess up a proper resin cure process. Bottom line is… don’t be to quick to blame the supplier when there’s a problem… like I sometimes have a tendency to do.

Happy building,

G-man

[MontuckyMadman]

great writeup.
What plastic specifically is good and what is bad?
I wish you had some pictures.

[G-man]

Here's some more detailed info on the plastic containers and the problem I encountered. The hardener component I use (ECA-032) is shipped in 1 gallon metal paint cans. For the last 2 or 3 years, I poured out of the 1 gallon cans into some 16 oz. squeeze bottles that I picked up from a local hardware store's 'housewares' section. These squeeze bottles worked fine. They have no markings on them to indicated what type of plastic they're made from, but I believe their intended purpose is for condiments like mustard and ketchup. At some point few months ago, my squeeze bottles had gotten funky enough that I decided to not fill them until I had a chance to clean them up, and grabbed a clean yogurt container instead. The skis I pressed that day turned out fine. But, when I mixed up some epoxy the next day, the mix turned a white'ish color as I mixed, and became thick and difficult to work with. It was a little chilly that day in the shop, so I attributed the changes in the epoxy to the cooler temps in the shop. When those skis came out of the press, the 'flash' epoxy was rubbery, rather than hard and tough. The flash got firmer as the skis cooled, but I could easily snap the flash off with my fingers. Usually, I couldn't break the flash with a pair of vise-grips. I hate to admit how long it took me to figure out that it was the plastic container that was causing the problem, but it was quite a long time. There were times when I was sure I had gotten a bad batch or hardener (or epoxy), but I finally realized that if I used the hardener straight out of the metal 1 gallon can, the cured epoxy was tough as nails again. One clue to finally figuring this out was that the hardener went from clear to slightly yellowed after about a day in the yogurt container. Yogurt containers weren't the only type of containers I had problems with, but in following up this morning, I note that all of the problem containers are labeled #2 HDPE... which surprises me a little bit because I had previously thought that polyethylene was pretty chemically resistant. Through all of this problem solving process, I've ended up with a pretty nice little QC testing proceedure. Now, every new batch of resin and hardener gets put through a small battery of tests to make sure that they cure to the usual specifications that previous batches have tested out at. This testing process also gives me a method by which to compare other epoxy systems from other suppliers. Anyway, like I said in my earlier e-mail, these recent problems taught me to not be so quick to blame the product for unexplained failures in my process.

Yes, it would have been nice if I had gotten some pictures, but fortunately, Forrest Paints has a web-site that has quite a few good pics. Here's a page that shows the 'bug tower', and has a good explanation of how it works:
http://forrestpaint.com/index.php?page=environmental
There are more pics of the facility if you look around the site.

G-man

[skidesmond]

SHIT! So have to ask, will storing the resin in a #2 plastic container cause a problem? I leave the hardener in the can, only because it is manageable. But now I know not to transfer it into a plastic container. But I started storing the resin in a plastic bottle because it's easier to pour. Also I started using those 16oz plastic red cups (beer cups) to mix resin/hardener in. They are a #6 plastic. Any idea if that can be a problem? Guess I'll start saving coffee cans.

G-Man thanks for this excellent info!

[chrismp]

what about glass? the dark green bottles.

[G-man]

You're welcome des. The way information flies around the internet now-a-days, if someone were to post that they had received a 'bad batch' of material from a particular supplier, and even if later that was shown to not be the case, a certain amount of damage could still have been done to that supplier's reputation. With this touchy economy we're in, I think we all benefit from doing what we can to help our suppliers stay in business in whatever way we can... which includes not spreading unfounded claims about product quality. From personal experience, I know that it gets a little easier to point fingers during times of high frustration.

I just went out to the shop and turned over a 5 gallon bucket of epoxy resin, and the plastic bucket is labeled as a #2 HDPE. So, it seems pretty clear that it's okay to store the resin itself in a plastic container. I try to keep a 12 months supply of all materials on hand, and I'm sure that I've used some epoxy resin that's sat in a plastic bucket for almost that long, with no issues.

I'm certainly no chemist, but from my own experience, I'm thinking it's okay to mix in a plastic cup. It seems that by the time the hardener would have time to react with the plastic in the cup, the resin mix would be past it's working time anyway. The real indicator for me that I had a problem was when I noticed that the resin mix was turning white and thickening while I was stirring it.

I, too, am collecting coffee cans. The only issue I've found with them is that they don't pour very cleanly. They get that 'drip down the side of the can' thing going. I'll be doing some more experimenting with the 'mustard and ketchup' style bottles. They're real easy to use, and in the past, I've never noted any issues with the plastic interacting with the hardener.

For me, I think the bottom line here is for each builder to develop a sample testing system and do frequent stress testing on standardized cured samples of epoxy. It's hard to know how many variables there might be that effect the quality of the resin and/or hardener over time and in varying environmental conditions... temperature and humidity for example. Every new batch of resin and hardener should be tested early in order to get base line stats.

All of this gets a little nerdy, I know. What can I say.

Okay, back to work.

G-man

[G-man]

Glass is the best material in terms of being non-chemically reactive. That's why everything in a chemistry lab is made from glass. I thought about glass, but I have a tendency to drop things, especially when they get sticky and goopy.

[Brazen]

Damn G, nice reporting! What is this mysterious "testing" you speak of?

[OAC]

Is there a continental difference between epoxys? I haven't heard/read any (i haven't read ALL posts) specific problem from europeans or down under. While NA seems to have all kind of problems with your epoxy mixes? Just a reflection

[G-man]

Is there a continental difference between epoxys? I haven't heard/read any (i haven't read ALL posts) specific problem from europeans or down under. While NA seems to have all kind of problems with your epoxy mixes? Just a reflection Smile

I can't speak to other problems you may have heard/read about regarding epoxy problems in NA, but this particular issue that I have written about isn't, IMO, a problem with the epoxy system. I think that most all hardener formulations are quite chemically caustic and potentially reactive with other materials, and I just might have been the first guy on the planet to get the bright idea to put this particular hardener into a #2 HDPE container. When used out of the containers the the epoxy and hardener are sold/shipped in, the cured epoxy system that I'm using is amazingly strong.

On a somewhat related note, though, we here in NA are beginning to experience supply problems that have been uncommon to us over the last few decades. Traditionally, we've always been able to get about anything we've wanted, from a number of different sources, in a day or two, and at a darned good price. From 2004 to 2008, the American economy went a little nuts. Most home prices doubled or tripled, and lots of people made a lot of money off of buying and selling real estate. Lots of new homes were being built and sold, so there were lots of jobs and the supply industry was working hard to keep up with demand. Many businesses borrowed and invested big money in growing their business so they could take full advantage of the big economic boon. Then suddenly, virtually overnight, it all came crashing down. Almost everybody in the building industry found themselves without work. The trickle-down effected almost everybody. Lots and lots of businesses were unable to pay the loan payments on all that money they borrowed and invested. Nearly the entire country found themselves over extended. Businesses closed like crazy, and this trend still continues. So, we North Americans are having to get used to not having everything quite as available as it used to be, and further, I personally think it's important for us all to do what we can to support the supply sources we still have.

Because we've had so many epoxy options in the past, it seems that various builders across the country have been using whatever brand of epoxy was easiest to get in their particular locale. Very few of these epoxy brands are specifically formulated for heat/compression molding like the old QCM products were (now Forrest Paints products). As a result, different ski and snowboard builders have had varying degrees of problems/issues with certain epoxies that weren't specifically formulated for ski and snowboard manufacture, especially when curing with heat is involved. So, yes, there's been a fair bit of discussion over the years regarding how to get these various 'general purpose' epoxies to work for vacuum or compression molding, but I think this might be associated, to some degree, with the fact that we've had so many choices.

What is this mysterious "testing" you speak of?

If I ever get my darned web-site up, I'll likely include some pics of my testing methods.


Lastly, I still have some hardener sitting around in a yogurt container. It's all yellow and ugly looking. So, if I can find a little extra time (which means that I'll have to stop spending so much time on this forum), I'll mix up a couple of small batches of epoxy... one using the hardener from the yogurt container, and the other one using hardener that is still in the metal gallon can (same batch that's in the yogurt container)... and then I'll take pictures of the mixed epoxy, so you all can see how one turns white and thick, while the other remains thin and clear.

G-man

[knightsofnii]

I personally think it's important for us all to do what we can to support the supply sources we still have.

agreed 150%

[sammer]

I got pretty paranoid about this topic as I decanted all my hardener and half my resin into plastic squeeze bottles last year.
Before my upcoming build I did a little test patch with some glass and topsheet.
It all stuck together nicely so went ahead and pressed a pair.
Bottles are #4 plastic and seem to be OK after close to a year.
Seems to have set up alright.
I know I had some west hardener in a plastic cup for 6 months and it turned really dark yellow.
I tried mixing it with some fresh resin and it turned all milky and never set up. Just stayed a messy goo.
I thought it was probably exposure to the air causing the "good stuff" to evaporate.
Now that I've read G-mans post, maybe is was the type of plastic.
Don't know that I want to experiment, just an observation.

YMMV

sam