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epoxytron
Sunday, July 13 2008
I'd put a single horizontal plank under the sliding door assembly of the downstairs guestroom where it opens up to the east slab, and I'd filled in places beneath it with Portland cement because there was a half inch gap between it and the bluestone-veneered slab. But today when I removed the stones holding the plank down onto that now-hardened Portland cement, the cement soon pealed off the bluestone, demonstrating it has virtually no adhesive power whatsoever. It would have just as easily broken off the plank, but when the cement had still been wet, I'd put a screw down through the plank into it. I've encountered Portland cement's poor adhesive qualities in a few cases before, but usually it doesn't manifest because masonry is usually used in places where nearly all stresses are compressive. The solution to this problem was some sort of glue, perhaps epoxy.
I've been using a lot of epoxy lately for my various rot abatement projects. Epoxy putty is great for cases where a plank is mostly good but has a few rotten places. I scrape out the rot and glurp in the putty, which adheres extremely well to anything that isn't oily (my fingers are usually just oily enough to serve as epoxy applicators without getting gummed up in the stuff).
Today I was also using the more syrupy form of epoxy to hold bits of wood in place as I replaced several square inches of rotted particle board wall sheathing I'd removed from the lower surround of the guest room's sliding glass doors. I could insert a long screw into a flat piece of wood to serve as a handle, goop it up with epoxy, and then, holding that screw, position it back in the hole to serve as a solid backing for a new piece of sheathing replacement. After five minutes, this backing would be so solid that I could hammer a nail into it without it coming loose. A few layers later, and I'd put in a bit of trim plank, fill in any resulting cracks with epoxy putty, sand it, and then I was ready to paint.
This evening it rained solidly for the first time in a long time, and I finally got a chance to see my gutters in action. For the first time ever, no water spattered in through the garage doors. And no water cascaded down in a sheet onto the east slab from two stories up. There was one annoying drip-drip-drip leak in one of my gutter joints, but at last it seems that the possibility of future water damage around that slab is behind me.
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