Monday, November 26, 2007

Laminate quality part 2

Well I guess practice does make you better. I removed the peel ply tonight on section 2 for inspection and it is even better than the first section. The white peel ply and the plastic sheet really allow you to 'have at' all the problem areas. It is a combination of visibility and the freedom to work the whetted cloth without damaging it.

In terms of cloth to resin ratio I can report the following

  1. Each layer of the 8.9 oz/sq yd cut to an area of 50" x 35" weighs about 12 oz. So with the two layers I am applying there is ~ 24 oz of cloth involved.
  2. I mixed up about 29-30 oz of resin and there was a little left over, that I did not weigh. I am assuming I applied about 27-28 oz of resin onto the surface of the float foam and the cloth. I also suspect that with this wet technique there is alot of foam surface roughness that has to be filled up to get good adhesion.
  3. I weighed the peel ply after removing it tonight and compared it to a similar unused sheet of the white peel ply. Unused the 3 oz peel ply weighs 4.95 oz. After peeling it with the epoxy saturating the material it weighed 7.25 oz. So there is about 2.25 oz of epoxy in the peel ply.
I can conclude that I am approaching a 1:1 resin to cloth ratio. Perhaps with vacuum bagging you can do better, but after looking at this latest result I am very very happy with what I am achieving.

It is really a huge thing for me. I was very concerned about my ability to produce a high quality outer hull laminate.

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