19-07-2013, 03:37 PM
No worries Gazz !!
Hope all goes well and you do get home tonight. It's so much better being at home.
Might see you at the field if the weather holds.
Glass cloth, as anyone who has ever handled it knows, frays and pulls out of shape very easily!! Thin glass cloth is even more fragile.
What I do to keep the thin stuff in good shape is: When I go to buy some, I take a piece of plastic sheet with me slightly larger than the glass I want to buy.
When they cut it off a roll, at the shop, instead of folding it up, I ask them to lay it on the plastic and roll it up for me.
When I come to use it later, It’s very easy to unroll and I can slide it along the bench without catching it and pulling a ladder in it.
I rarely ever use scissors to cut cloth. Mostly I use a straight edge and a knife or use a Knife around a template. I cut straight through
the plastic backing layer as well then the whole thing rolls up neatly for storage again when I’m done. This way I mostly avoid the inevitable fur-ball
that can easily happen when handling glass cloth.
One trick I recently learned is using Paper to soak up the excess resin and take it away, Since the plastic sheets are pretty flat at the layup stage I’ve taken to simply pressing the roll of dunny paper down on it as I unroll it, It’s quick and it works a treat. The paper peels off easily without lifting the glass.
I repeated the process until the paper comes off dry. There is more than enough resin left in the cloth to bind it fast to the foam core after it’s been vac-bagged !!
Here’s wing no3 in the bag. I’ll have to find a better material to make stencils for painting from, for this one I just used A4 paper and it didn’t quite produce the result I was after.
For the previous wing I used R 180 Resin from FGI, the wing before that was made using WEST systems epoxy and for this wing I was kindly given some LY 191 resin to try out By Steve H
For a comparison between the Three, West and R180 were very similar to use, west might be very slightly thinner if I had to choose between the two, The LY 191 was noticably thinner than the other two and more easily spread and quicker to wet out the cloth. I think it came out of the cloth a little better when I blotted the lay up with toilet tissue. All three resins were used at 22 degrees C. I think the the LY 191 did take a little longer to gell which gives it a bit more working time which is handy too.
Hope all goes well and you do get home tonight. It's so much better being at home.
Might see you at the field if the weather holds.
Glass cloth, as anyone who has ever handled it knows, frays and pulls out of shape very easily!! Thin glass cloth is even more fragile.
What I do to keep the thin stuff in good shape is: When I go to buy some, I take a piece of plastic sheet with me slightly larger than the glass I want to buy.
When they cut it off a roll, at the shop, instead of folding it up, I ask them to lay it on the plastic and roll it up for me.
When I come to use it later, It’s very easy to unroll and I can slide it along the bench without catching it and pulling a ladder in it.
I rarely ever use scissors to cut cloth. Mostly I use a straight edge and a knife or use a Knife around a template. I cut straight through
the plastic backing layer as well then the whole thing rolls up neatly for storage again when I’m done. This way I mostly avoid the inevitable fur-ball
that can easily happen when handling glass cloth.
One trick I recently learned is using Paper to soak up the excess resin and take it away, Since the plastic sheets are pretty flat at the layup stage I’ve taken to simply pressing the roll of dunny paper down on it as I unroll it, It’s quick and it works a treat. The paper peels off easily without lifting the glass.
I repeated the process until the paper comes off dry. There is more than enough resin left in the cloth to bind it fast to the foam core after it’s been vac-bagged !!
Here’s wing no3 in the bag. I’ll have to find a better material to make stencils for painting from, for this one I just used A4 paper and it didn’t quite produce the result I was after.
For the previous wing I used R 180 Resin from FGI, the wing before that was made using WEST systems epoxy and for this wing I was kindly given some LY 191 resin to try out By Steve H
For a comparison between the Three, West and R180 were very similar to use, west might be very slightly thinner if I had to choose between the two, The LY 191 was noticably thinner than the other two and more easily spread and quicker to wet out the cloth. I think it came out of the cloth a little better when I blotted the lay up with toilet tissue. All three resins were used at 22 degrees C. I think the the LY 191 did take a little longer to gell which gives it a bit more working time which is handy too.
“The knack of flying is learning how to throw your machine at the ground and miss.”
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your thoughts turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." ~Leonardo Da Vinci