Tuesday, January 29, 2008

More fairing and bulkheads

I do a light sanding between the layers of fairing compound. Making sure to do it before it is fully cured, the next layer can be applied without fairing the whole surface. At the same time letting the compound cure for a while makes it possible to sand down the high spots and the small unevenness from the previous layer. The paper gets clogged quite soon, though.

Here the second layer lightly sanded and the third layer on it's way:


After some fairing of the third layer, fully cured before sanding this time. Guess the sander had to take a break and it felt reasonable to utilize this time documenting progress... By the time I had sanded this side down until I met the hard spots the surface felt very even. I have decided I will hire a professional to do the final coating and I will not go any further in the finishing at this stage. I had a visit from a professional car body painter tonight and he confirmed my suspicion about the quality of the surface.

Doing the candy bag routine on the other side. Using an air driven cartridge gun makes it easy to apply these lines of fairing compound:

This next picture illustrates the point with this method. A low spot along the keel line, after fairing the ridges with the long board the fairing compound can be added very precisely and a lot of time sanding down wrongly positioned compound is saved.


Between the sanding I have started the preparations for the beam bulkheads:


Laying out the two layers of 200g carbon fabric each side, 0° - 90° and then 45° - 45°


The plans says no overlaps, but as this fabric only comes in one meter rolls that is not possible....

Temporarily fixed to the foam with 3M #77, a technique that I piced up at the resin infusion composite lab at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. Ready to receive the peel ply, release film, tubing and vacuum film.

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