Too cold to fix hulls?

I live in the midwest and we have a few 40 degree plus days ahead of us. When is it too cold to deal with soft hulls and injecting the west marine resin? Is the chance for it not working greater or is it just harder to work with? All comments from people that have warm weather year round will be completely ignored.

I wouldn't work with epoxy when it's below 50 degrees unless you can put some heat on the area that you're working on.

The cure rate of epoxy is proportional to the temperature. Below 50 degrees, it will take forever for the epoxy to cure.

There's a good description of the process here:
http://www.wessex-resins.com/westsystem/wspotlife.html

Definitely do the repairs in your garage. The cure temperature can be as critical as when actually working the application. Build a simple tent with sawhorses and some plastic sheeting and carefully place a drop light (or two) centered underneath the tent. This should keep enough heat through a cold couple of overnights for your work to cure.

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hobiejohn at earthlink dot net
Fleet 297

I live in Cali, but in the last few weeks we havn't had temperatures above 50 avg. of 40-42. Obviously it takes a little longer to complete the repairs but with some of the resins that I have used they have given a chart of the amount of catalist to add depending on the temp.
I've made all of my repairs and they have all been solid. The only difference between doing in the winter and doing it in the summer has been the time I let it set before the next coat.

I did some softspot repairs with Git Rot late this fall up here in Western NY. Temps were about 40ish while I was doing them. Might have fallen a bit lower over night. It took much longer for the resin to harden (about 2 days), but they feel rock hard now.

Of course, I haven't had the boat out on the water since I did them and that was my first delam repair, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

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-Bill

Conesus Lake, NY
1976 Hobie 14