OK Thanks man, following your post on both here and MFK. good luck, and your lucky your old lady is so understanding, mine just doesnt get it.
315G Plywood Tank Build
- Thread starter BadOleRoss
- Start date
Mine doesn't entirely understand but she pretty much allows me to do whatever. I dont need her permission to do things like this but it sure makes life a lot easier when I get the go ahead. She pretty much new I was going to break the tank at some point (I have a history) I ususally do it when its full of water.
I just completed a test using PC, Wood, Glass, Acrylic, Silicone and my whirlpool tub. I took a piece of plywood, painted it with PC, stuck a piece of wood to it, a piece of acrylic to it, I stuck another piece of wood on top of the glass and acrylic and I put a beadof silicone on top of an area of the pond coat. I let the PC dry/cure for over 3 weeks. Yesterday afternoon I floated this mess in my whirpool tub to see if the PC stuck to these surfaces. The pondcoat did fine with acrylics but pealed right off the glass.
Cured or not, PC does not stick to glass, not in my house anyway. I was also able to peal the siicone off PC with my fingers. It did remove 1 layer of PC with it but it came nowhere near pulling offwood as in Joey's test. My silicone was only on the PC for about 3-4 days. I cannot and will not count on PC bonding to glass to help me get a seal. What I am planning to do at this point in to coat my viewing window frame with fiberglass resin. Doing this will give the silicone something to bond to and it will give the PC something to bond to.
Sounds like my wife,and life :rofl:
Sounds like a good solution. Have you ordered the glass?
Yes, I have ordered the glass, should be here the end of next week. I will start the roughted up glass test tomorrow.
While I have waiting on the replacement glass to arrive and trying to figure out how to get a seal on the viewing window, I have been working on the hood. I used an 8' T-8 light fixture from Lowe's that holds 4-48" bulbs. I have also wired in 7 receptacles that will hold what are essentially night lights with blue LED bulbs. The night lights actually have 4 different colored bulbs (red, blue, yellow and clear) but I am using them for moon lights so they will remain blue. Both lights are on separate power cords so they can go on timers. Today I will start working on filling the holes, putty, sanding, priming and painting. I also set up several test pallets to see if PC will stick to fiberglass resin, if sanding the glass helps the PC bond, if silicone sticks to fiberglass resin. When cleaning up the broken glass I found places where the PC bonded very well to the glass so there is something going on here.....just gotta figure out what!
The LEDs are moon lights. They will only be on at night when the main lights are turned off. It really is just something nice to look at instead of a dark tank. The main lighting for the tank is the t-8 tubes that are mounted in there with the LEDs. I am not sure if we are at the point yet where LEDs can light an entire tank economically but I am sure we are not far off.
I completed my glass test with pond coat and came to the conclusion that there is no way in hell that pond coat is ever going to stick to glass. I cleaned the glass like a good little solider and even let the PC dry completely before I placed it in the tub again. Within 24, the PC was pealing away from the glass. It just does not stick to glass! In another little test I conducted at the same time, I found that PC sticks very well to fiberglass resin as does silicone. So, to get my glass viewing window to seal I am going to be painting the windows frame with fiberglass resin. I will then silicone the glass in place to the resin, and once the silicone is dry, I will PC over the resin up to the edge of the silicone. Tomorrow, the house will smell like fiberglass resin!
