To clamp or not to clamp?
To clamp or not to clamp?
Question for you trey, do the clamps stay on after the day and a half cure when you remove the zip ties, or do they stay in place? Curious because I can see periods and cons to both.
To clamp or not to clamp?
Just thought io would give you guys wanting to do the direct injection way some hope! First off i will just say this, I have used both ways and both do the same thing at the end of the day, and that is to hold the tank together. Now i will state some pros and cons of both direct inj and the other way. For direct inject there is no possible way you will get airbubbles even if you suck at the other way becasue if there is an air pcokect you can just keep pushing silicone into it till it pushes out con is that if you make the direct injection gap to big you can cause the tank to want to wiggle a little bit, doesn't hurt anything just is annoying imo. Pros for the second method is that you don't have to worry about buying 90# clams and tons of pipe clamps cons are you have a great chance of air bubbles if you do not do this on a daily bases and lastly you use way more silicone which i hate dealing with the mess! So IMO direct injection is the way to go if you are a beginner or only build a tank like lets say 1time a year, but if you are building tanks on a weekly bases or months it is def not the way to go because it is way more time consuming because you do have to do it step by step unlike the reg way where you just put it all together in one step and leave it alone for 3days the injections method you have to first put little silicone tacks in so that the tank can hold its self in place without the zip ties so that you can properly inject the whole tank, after doing this you have already doubled the time it takes to do it the reg way. Here is a few pictures of how i do it. I typically wait about 1 day and a half before taking the zipties out and finishing the tank. I am currently rebuilding a 50gallon and next week i am building a 60gallon low iron glass tank.(I would never go anything over 1/16 inch gap because past that and you are going to have major wiggling lol.
This third picture is of a bathroom glass that i did and as you can see it has a gap as well
O and one last little tip, if you are rebuilding a tank and dont want to kill your fingers trying to get the silicone off with a razor blade, use a dremel with a carbon steel brush and it will take it off way faster and way cleaner with no scratches left behind =) here is a video and a picture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA7zA32aRCs
Question for you trey, do the clamps stay on after the day and a half cure when you remove the zip ties, or do they stay in place? Curious because I can see periods and cons to both.
