Kent763;1269936; said:
Jem454 has a 4 foot deep tank made with a 3/4" plate glass table top. It just celebrated its 1st B-Day.
Glass As Liner???
- Thread starter Hartzell
- Start date
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Jem454 has a 4 foot deep tank made with a 3/4" plate glass table top. It just celebrated its 1st B-Day.
If you are gonna spend all that money on acrylic, just switch to a low cost fiberglass and epoxy then coat it with sweetwater or pond shield to make it fish friendly.
actually using 1/8th or 1/4 acrylic isn't all that bad price wise... at least around here... I'm thinking that Fiberglassing the tank and using acrylic would prob come out somewhere in the same cost area... Actually prob less for the acrylic with less likly leaking issues... easier to seal the window in as well... Fiberglassing takes a skilled hand and if not done properly will be a huge headache.
My Vote would abviously be using Acrylic if your not comfortable using Fiberglass
My Vote would abviously be using Acrylic if your not comfortable using Fiberglass
basslover34;1275972; said:actually using 1/8th or 1/4 acrylic isn't all that bad price wise... at least around here... I'm thinking that Fiberglassing the tank and using acrylic would prob come out somewhere in the same cost area... Actually prob less for the acrylic with less likly leaking issues... easier to seal the window in as well... Fiberglassing takes a skilled hand and if not done properly will be a huge headache.
My Vote would abviously be using Acrylic if your not comfortable using Fiberglass
FG CAN be a headache, but if you read a bit first, and do it according to a reasonable technique, it should be no problem. That said though... a properly built plywood tank should not require actual glass fiber reinforcement - you can just paint the resin onto the wood.
Another thing that might cause you a problem, even with acrylic, is that if you put anything heavy in the tank, on thin plexi, it may crack. Any resin or paint based sealing will soak down into the wood fiber, so the surface will be able to withstand a fair bit of abuse.
I had never done FG and took about 10 minutes to get used to the first 12 sqft. After that is was nice and easy. The benefit with FG is that you can do a layout coat that will suck into the wood then the wet out coat, so you get waterproofing over the entire area. It actually only took me about 30 minutes to do 96 square feet. Then a couple hours later your do it again.
You get super strong laminate with the two layers, and then you can add as many layers of epoxy as you want.
With acrylic, you have to cut it. If you don't have the right tools, you have cracked it. I use a table saw or router but not everyone has those. They sell the hand blades, and I would imagine they work on 1/8" or less but anything thicker will require something else.
With glass you have to ensure you have perfect dimensions and the glass has to be cut to those dimensions.
Fiberglass - you just overlap and sand off the hang-over. Pefect fit everytime and two coats is way less than 1/16", unless you make it thicker.
You get super strong laminate with the two layers, and then you can add as many layers of epoxy as you want.
With acrylic, you have to cut it. If you don't have the right tools, you have cracked it. I use a table saw or router but not everyone has those. They sell the hand blades, and I would imagine they work on 1/8" or less but anything thicker will require something else.
With glass you have to ensure you have perfect dimensions and the glass has to be cut to those dimensions.
Fiberglass - you just overlap and sand off the hang-over. Pefect fit everytime and two coats is way less than 1/16", unless you make it thicker.
tunerX;1277123; said:Fiberglass - you just overlap and sand off the hang-over. Pefect fit everytime and two coats is way less than 1/16", unless you make it thicker.
This depends quite heavily on what grade of fiber textile you use. There is everything available from very thin, flexible weave, to high build heavy duty chopped strand mats. For this kind of project I'd probably go with light (4-8oz/yd) cloth. As tunerX has said, just coat the wood with resin, let it cure up a little while until it's tacky, stick your cloth to it, paint more resin on, and repeat.
The only trick with polyester resins, is that they will NOT cure in the presence of moisture, even the moisture in the air. As a result, many resins have a wax additive, that locks out the air for it to cure - unfortunately if your resin has this wax additive, you have to remove the film before you can do another layer. This is easily solved by either wiping down with acetone, or just using a resin without wax for the glass reinforced layers, and doing your last layer with waxed. OR, just doing one layer. When finished, topcoat with sweetwater epoxy if you're paranoid (or don't - polyester should be fine underwater for a number of years.)
My next DIY monster tank will be done this way, unless it is large enough to warrant concrete construction... and even then I may use FG to form the inner barrier.
