Hi Andrew
Listening in, so to speak, on this thread, and with lots of epoxying of my own in prospect, could I raise two points from the helpful advice you have given?
1) During the process of softening cured epoxy with a heat gun for cleaning up purposes, it is presumably not possible to confine the heating/softening process precisely and only to epoxy which is to be scraped off? Which means that some of the softened epoxy remaining in the joint or under the tape, or wherever, will harden up again when the heat is removed. Is epoxy which has cured, been softened by heating, and hardened again when cooled down, as strong and stable as epoxy which hasn't been treated in this way? Put another way, could structural strength and integrity be compromised at all?
2) Using heat to reduce epoxy viscosity presumably also considerably shortens curing time? - which could be awkward, and obviously needs to be taken into account. Is this an indication to use slow hardener (I use West System) to offset this?
I have a heat gun, originally bought to burn off old paint (in a domestic context) but never actually used for that purpose. It's actually been quite handy for a number of diverse applications, but I haven't used it for epoxying - yet!
Thanks for sharing your expertise with us rookie builders - I'm sure much appreciated all round
SP Cadenza (and to-be-built TR12)