Adding hardener to reheats

[mark poulson]

I wanted to add some hardener to my already cooked GP swimbait plastic that I'd mixed and poured once.  My first swimbaits were just too soft.

I'm still working on a pint jar of hardener from Bear, so that tells you how old that stuff is.

I didn't want to add the hardener to the old stuff after it was heated, because I knew from experience that adding fresh hardener to hot plastic makes it set immediately, and just produces lumps.  Been there, done that.

Since I typically add additional new plastic to my reheats, to replace what I've already poured,  I took that fresh plastisol and mixed in the hardener, enough for the whole finished batch, old and new.  Mixing the hardener with the fresh cold plastisol gets it completely dissolved in the plastisol, so there was no danger of lumping.  I also added some heat stabilizer, since I reheat a lot.

Then I added the new hardener plastisol into the older cold plastic, and heated it all up to 350 again, to get the new stuff to convert.

Once it was all up to temp, I stirred it again to get any lumps of older stuff mixed in well, and then heated it for another 30 seconds.   That got any remaining lumps melted.

The new mixture was about 335, shot great, and the swimbaits were the right hardness.

It works for me.

[Bass-Boys]

yup that's basically the only way to add hardener to remelts .

 

[mark poulson]

1 hour ago, Bass-Boys said:

yup that's basically the only way to add hardener to remelts .

 

Dude, now you tell me!  Hahaha