Friday, September 07, 2007

Positioning and gluing the carbon fiber chainplates on the floats

It sure is good to get these chain plates I made early last winter finally on the boat. Last night I took Jay's good advice and cut the opening for the Precourt hardware before gluing them on today. The best tools for cutting the opening in my opinion is a hacksaw and a file. However, I was tempted to take them to work and have the openings machined on a full mill. It took some time with the hand tools but I'm happy with the result.


They need to be covered after the epoxy putty cures (I used Aeropoxy resin and Cabosil) and plan to use some lighter filler to smooth out the sharp corners.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Plexi glass makes the best jigs. Glues up fast. Al sorts of weird and wonderful shapes can be had by gluing (welding actually with a solvent)pieces together….Trophy shop usually have small laser that can cut intricate patterns in plexi…..Then with some double sided tape to hold them in place and a router with a bearing bit your off to the races.

Tom

GK said...

Hey Tom,
I found that the epoxy putty to be pretty hard and brittle. It was hard to hold the router bit steady. Your right, if I understand you correctly, that you would need a jig to keep the router bit cutting where you want it to.

When are starting your blog Tom?, a posting with workshop preparations is a good place to start! :)

Grant