First bulkheads glassed

Float center bk and bow bk are the less critical, IMO, so we started with them; here they are, before trimming:

We took a 100 x 75 cm foam piece (I had the foam sheets cut in 3 equal parts to bring them home in my car) and managed to optimize placement of our FSP copies. These paper copies were produced over this glass table, illuminating the FSP from below, no carbon copy film used. The bulkheads will be trimmed a little undersize and checked over the original FSP, but I found paper copies very handy. Here is the glass table:

Here is [part of] a "dry" F-22; just add water ... ;-)


We didn't used vacuum for these panels; maybe later. We laminated a "face" at a time, always using peelply. First panel was done "wet" method: epoxy was rolled over bare foam to saturate it, then glass was put over and rolled. At this point the panel had received the same amout of glass and epoxy, that's 210 gr glass and 210 gr epoxy. But the glass was far from wetted, IMO: it wasn't transparent ! In many place it was completely dry. No good ...

So I mixed more resin, another 210 gr, just to be sure, and start to apply it with the roller; now things went better and I could see the drawing on the foam, under the glass. I continued rolling until the glass was evenly wetted. Then we applied the peelply. First time in my life I used peelply ... and I'll use it again ! It started wetting while we pulled it and pressed it with our gloved hands. I finished applying the residual epoxy with the roller, and rolled, and rolled ...

So in the end we have got 33% glass and 67% resin in that lamination. I don't know how much resin has been trapped in the peelply, but anyway here is a close look at the result:


This is one of the less beautiful spot; those shiny areas denotes resin starvation, I'm afraid ... but I don't know really ... the glass is trasparent there, believe me, but there wasn't enough resin to reach the peelply surface. The brighter diagonal rows are where the glass fibres are a little more far apart from each other. No bubbles anywhere. Here is a better spot:


Subsequent laminations were done with less resin over the bare foam and the last panel was done in "dry" metod; in this way we were able to reach a ratio of 40% glass and 60% epoxy, that I know is far from the optimal 50 50 or less. The peelply was always completely wetted:



but I don't think it was wetted to the point to be able to receive a plastic sheet over and "loose" some resin from the laminate rolling toward the edges of the panel, as Grant is experimenting, lately. BTW: Grant is a marketing ace: he repackaged my "poor man vacuum bagging" in his "plastic on peelply" technique ... I must agree that it sounds far better ;-)

I'll meet my friend Luigi in the next few weeks, to show him my first laminations and have a look at his hulls. In the meantime ... comments welcome, as always.