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Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
By:John Abercrombie
Date: 6/28/2012, 4:35 pm
In Response To: Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming (danperry)

: Cutting the glass/carbon strips, placement, and wetting out have me
: a little fearful.
A few ideas:
Cut your strips on the bias (45 deg or so), they will deform and curve more easily that way. You will end up with diagonal 'ends' on the strips which helps to make the joins less obvious.
You should remove the selvage edge. The carbon I have has yellow kevlar edge stitching which I don't want in my layup.
Make the strips as long as possible- pre-cut lots of them them and roll them up. Try not to stretch the strips when handling; you can always pull them wider if necessary. If a long strip gets out of control, or starts to wrinkle, just cut it.
Use slow epoxy and/or cool conditions.
You can wet out the strips on a board covered with wax paper/foil, or wet them out on the boat. Once you get going you can put strips on and 'massage' a bit to get them wet out. Try not to get the layup too resin-rich, squeeze/squeegee the excess resin out.
Have lots of extra gloves handy.
Put down newspaper or plastic in the cockpit to catch drips.

About the 3.2 oz glass: If you can buy some heavier glass locally (autobody/marine supply?) it would save quite a bit of work with layup. Or just u$e extra carbon.
(The carbon is really optional- you seldom see a commercial coaming with carbon fiber, but you would need to put pigment into an all-glass layup.)

It might be worthwhile to lay up a small flat section (3"x6"?) on wax paper with your planned layup schedule. Then you can see how flexible the result will be. (Note-epoxy does continue to harden up for days...for the test piece you can speed this up with moderate heat.)

Good luck!

Messages In This Thread

Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/27/2012, 10:46 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 12:32 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Erik -- 6/28/2012, 2:35 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 7:40 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming *PIC*
Sean Dawe -- 6/28/2012, 9:18 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 10:08 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Sean Dawe -- 6/28/2012, 11:02 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
John Abercrombie -- 6/28/2012, 12:10 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 1:26 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Bill Hamm -- 7/1/2012, 2:12 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Robert l -- 6/28/2012, 1:28 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 1:32 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Robert l -- 6/28/2012, 1:35 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 3:34 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
John Abercrombie -- 6/28/2012, 2:28 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 3:43 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Clayton Plunkett -- 6/28/2012, 3:54 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
John Abercrombie -- 6/28/2012, 4:35 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Eric Mattison -- 6/28/2012, 4:24 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/28/2012, 5:51 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
John Abercrombie -- 6/28/2012, 9:27 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming *PIC*
danperry -- 6/29/2012, 11:23 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
mick allen -- 6/28/2012, 4:29 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Marc Upchurch -- 6/28/2012, 11:19 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Sean Dawe -- 6/29/2012, 1:50 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Marc Upchurch -- 6/29/2012, 4:59 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming *PIC*
Bryan K -- 6/29/2012, 2:49 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Marc Upchurch -- 6/29/2012, 5:13 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Bryan K -- 7/2/2012, 8:22 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 6/29/2012, 11:02 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Bryan K -- 7/2/2012, 8:20 am
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 7/2/2012, 6:08 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Marc Upchurch -- 7/2/2012, 7:29 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
danperry -- 7/2/2012, 7:31 pm
Re: Seeking: Carbon Fiber Cockpit/Coaming
Bill Hamm -- 7/3/2012, 1:03 am