Re: Love, Necessity and Pride
Any issues with air pockets going over the top of the stringers? What method did you use to apply the resin? I know...I ask to many questions:facepalm:
You, my dear Sir, may ask all of the questions you could ever think of...because thanks to your inquisitiveness, you are constantly helping many, many people!
My application technique is as follows...
1- The tops of the stringers were rounded over to begin with, one of your many helpful hints...
2- I laid apiece of cardboard on the work table and wet out the 1708, CSM side up, until it was almost clear using a cloth type roller, similar to the foam rollers in size, but with a sort of cloth nap...
3- I then wet out the area with resin, where the piece was going to reside, with the same cloth roller...
4- With the assistance of my good friend, Gabriel, we then transported the wet piece to its permanent resting place...
5- Using mostly my gloved hands, I pressed most of the material into place by combing it down on both sides of the top, towards the fillet...
6- the rest of the material that was laying on the hull bottom, I just flattened it somewhat, but left it mostly kind of loose and a bit wrinkly...
7-Then, using the same roller dipped in resin, I started working the cloth down towards the fillet on both sides, adding more resin as needed to help it lay down...I also pushed with the loaded roller, into the curve of the fillets, and finally began flattening out the remaining cloth that was laying against the bottom of the hull...
8-I finished of by using the jab, jab, jab method with a chip brush to finish popping any remaining bubbles and moved on to the next piece...
As far as using a bubble buster, well let's just say, that I prefer to use the chip brush method for a couple of reasons...
The bubble buster, can, and a lot of times creates more air problems than it takes away, due to its somewhat hard nature...I don't know how best to describe it, but the chip brush is much more controllable and gentler...I find it more precise, when I just want to pop some small bubbles, without disturbing the surrounding area...
Which, by the way, was all I basically ended up with using the method described above of pre-wetting everything and applying it the way I did...
Another point is, I had an awesome assistant, and I kept at least 3 to 4, half liter batches of resin, ready to be catalyzed, as needed...as I used up what I had on hand, I had G-Man kick of the next batch...
Speaking of which, I was putting down anywhere from 12 inch wide to 26 inch wide by 50 inch long pieces of 1708...
and starting out with as much as 2.5 liters of catalyzed resin to do all the pre-wetting and laying down...
We were also working in the shade, out of direct Sun light, which would have made some of these huge lay ups impossible, no matter how slow I would have kicked the resin...which we were kicking at about 1%...as an example, most of the lay ups we had done Saturday morning, remained nice and moist for the better part of a couple of hours, when we went for lunch, we pulled the boat out into the Sun, and less than an hour later, everything we had done was hard!
On a final note, even though we were working as efficiently as a well oiled machine, the center stringer alone took almost three hours of wetting, laying, and DE-bubbling the cloth...this stuff takes time!
Well as usual, I could have shown this long winded explanation with a video, if I had a working GoPro and knew how to produce the videos...but for now, you will all have to suffer through my feeble, wordy attempts at describing the process...
Off to La-La land...G'nite Y'all
...well at least get something done...
