10' UV light build for garage glassing

I had some tendonitis going a few months ago, and figured if I couldn’t hold a sanding block right, I’d keep busy some other way. My wife hates the smell of curing resin, so I use UV cure in order to have the process move quickly. Problem is, I was developing a trail of drops on the patio out to where I cure boards, the pathway to that spot was a ding gauntlet for boards, and my glassing window as a dad often doesnt match the sunny parts of the day. 

I had a bunch of doorskin for templates that kept attacking my fingers, (Bill, you were right) so I decided to use that for my build just to be rid of it. I found UV lamps online, agreed to glass a board or two for my neighbor in exchange for some old housings he had in his garage, and ordered a ceiling mount pulley set from Jeff (amazon). 

The doorskin material is very light, but with all the ribs glued up, the light and hood feels solid. Feels like a model airplane wing. If I wasnt committed to using up the doorskins I think glassing the thing like an old Biplane wing could have been cool. I’m too cheap to burn that much cloth and resin on a non-board, though. 

The lamp cured my laminating stage to a thickening cut-lap stage in a couple minutes, and it was feeling pretty hard when I came back in around 10 minutes later. I don’t have exact times because I didn’t want to stick my fingers in uncured resin and mess up my glass job, but it seemed reasonable in it’s cure times. One thing that I need to improve is the light reaching the rails. Maybe some sort of flap that can hang on each side iof the lamp to bounce light around to the rail. I had to move the board to one side then the other and prop it at an angle to get the light to reach it. Other than that, it was nice to cure the board in place, no doorknob or barbecue dings :smiley:

 

 




Some reflective material inside your hood might help.

Exactly.

A coat of bright white paint on the under side of your hood is a start.  

Hi all, thank you for the feedback. You know, I have some reflective metallic silver spraypaint for it from other projects, and that was the original plan. But when I tried it out on mockup with just wood grain as the reflective surface and the board cured in minutes, that seemed unnecessary. It really seems more of an angle of reflection thing - I don’t think the light is being bounced down around to those rails. If I end up taking this beast down to add little flaps along the sides, I’ll definitely spray that underside too, as it’s very little extra work once it’s down and on sawhorses. Right now I’m thinking of adding a 6-8" flap along each side held there by hog rings or domething, with a tie or something at each end to pull it inward and around the rail to really get the light bounced where I want it. 

 

Thank you for the brainstorming!

Foil tape from Home Depot would be all you’d need.

That is not a bad Idea at all, and come to think of it, I have some! Thank you!