I am sorry for the problems you encountered building your deck with our Thin Air Press system.

Over the past 5 years Norah my wife and I have personally used our kit to teach hundreds of people how to make skateboards with very few problems.

The process is also being used by other teachers and individuals all over the world with great success. Our kits are sold by almost all the major woodworking retail companies across North America and in your case Australia. All of these companies tested our kits rigorously before offering them to their customers without any problems.

The instructions you received with your kit clearly says “BEFORE YOU START…. Please read these instructions carefully! We recommend doing a DRY RUN of the laminating process before applying ANY glue.”

Vacuum laminating, to say the least is a tricky procedure. Like most processes the more experience you have with the process the less chance there is for making mistakes. This is why we clearly inform people to do a dry run before committing glue to expensive veneers. This advise would have given us a good chance of solving the problem before it became an issue.

Most leakage problems occur when the sealing tape is not pressed together properly. I suspect this was the cause of the problem you encountered. There is an instructional video of how to do this correctly on our Roarockit website. When sealing your TAP bag pay attention to the two beaded seams. The sealing tape should be pressed firmly into where the seamed vinyl meets. The tape when properly sealed should look black along the length of the seal. Look for white gaps in the tape where air leakage can occur. It is simple to press them out using finger pressure.

After viewing the video, if the TAP bag and valve is still usable (vacuum cleaner and duct tape may have damaged the valve) I suggest trying a test run, without glue on some scrap material. If you continue to have problems email me at ted@roarockit.com and we will gladly send you a new replacement TAP bag. There is a serial number printer on the side of the box your TAP bag came in that you will need to include in your email.

Ted

Sorry but I can’t find a single good thing to say about this piece of junk

Our patent is on the process for making a skateboard using the components that are included in our TAP system.

Yup you are right! Vacuum bagging has been around forever and is not patentable but the process of making a skateboard deck using a manual vacuum pump with a one way valve attached to a vacuum bag to press pre-cut layers over a foam mold has not.

Our kit was created to simplify vacuum veneering. We did this by taking away the connectors, hoses, electric pump, reservoir tanks and valves that are normally associated with vacuum veneering.

There are always tradeoffs when one tries to simplify a process. With our vacuum system you cannot plug the pump in to the wall and walk away from it. You have to keep any eye on it for a few minutes.

This trade off saves one having to buy all pipes and fittings of a conventional vacuum system.

Internal off gassing of the epoxy resulting in loss of vacuum has never been a problem with our kits. If the TAP bags are sealed properly once the air is pulled out there is not an appreciable loss in vacuum while epoxies cure.

Hope this answers your questions.

Ted

One potential problem with any vacuum bagging system that doesn’t have a continous or automatic pump is that even a very slight leak or just outgassing from resins can degrade the vacuum in the bag. The volume of air left in the bag after you pump it down is near zero, so just a slight amount of gas can increase the air pressure in that tiny space (i.e. reduce the vacuum level) significantly.

One way to fix that is to make the space in the bag a bit bigger, with a vacuum reservoir. the reservoir increases the effective space in the bag a lot, so that leaks or outgassing degrade the vacuum that much more slowly.

It seems to me that with a TAP, you could just use a longer bag than necessary, and put a mason jar with a hole in the lid INSIDE THE BAG. You’d have to pump the air out of that jar when you evacuated the bag, but once you did, it would serve as a reservoir, sucking up any fumes or leaked air. The vacuum would degrade much more slowly that way. You’d likely maintain nearly your maximum vacuum several times longer, and/or need to top off the vacuum (by pumping) several times less often.

People have been making manual vacuum pumps (out of old-style bike pumps) for a long time.

Is the novelty just applying it to vacuum bagging? Or is there something special about this particular manual vacuum pump, or perhaps the way it’s connected to the bag?

I am in no way dissing your product, by the way. It seems like a sensible inexpensive way to go about vacuum bagging small things.

Ted

****************HINT**************
If you are too lazy to pump the air out, use your natural pump: your mouth and lungs. put your lips over the nozzle, squeeze it and suck the air out. Very easy, and completely heterosexual.

There are a couple of things that should be stated though:

I did upgrade by making press boards (the boards with the grooves in the back to keep the work piece flat. I did have some trouble with the bag not holding a vacuum but found out that was due to me not sealing the bag well. Mine came with the white covered tape and apparently they are offering a better tape now. I have used Titebond II glue as well, not normal veneering glue. TB II sets faster so if you are doing small parts and you do loose vacuum the chances of you wrecking your work are less. Just be FAST and careful when you are putting your work piece into the bag. I plan to upgrade to a sealing system (basically a long wooden clamp) in the near future, this should eliminate this problem.

I have had problems with pulling a vacuum but just taking the hand pump off and re-seating it has taken care of that problem. I have a feeling that is the problem that JWW ran into since when I have re-seated it has not taken more that 15 pumps (remember small parts) to get the pump to where it “feels” like there is full vacuum. I do not have a gauge so I cannot confirm this, however I can state that I have never had a problem with one of my completed projects. If I ever get around to it I will buy a gauge and test it out. That would be interesting to see. I do find it interesting that roarockit has not disputed any of the readings that JWW took. I would ask the question as to how long it took a trained professional (a roarrockit employee) to pull 18” of vacuum and then 21” of vacuum.

Now I have not tried large projects but I would assume that the pump time would increase. This may make this kit unacceptable for much larger application such as a tabletop but we will see. I have to order a bigger bag to do this.