Saturday, June 13, 2015

Beam fillets

Made a little more progress on beam #4.  Here you see the beam and mold on its side to make lamination of the corner fillets a little easier.  The only way I can figure to laminate the interior of the beams is to do the sides (w/ fillets) and bottom separately in three big stages with healthy overlaps.  Even laminating  piecemeal, I find some of the areas with complex geometry difficult to keep neat, though I am getting better with practice.  I laminated the first side (now oriented above) yesterday, and could have easily flipped the assembly over to do the second side in the afternoon, but laziness is quite the seductress.
Here is a view from the other end (outer end).  As usual, I always try to apply peel-ply to keep the glass fibers well encapsulated and aligned, as well as making prep for the next stage much, much easier.  It is important to apply the peel-ply before the epoxy starts to kick, otherwise it won't wet the peel-ply.  And I often have to resist the temptation to apply epoxy on top of the peel-ply, but that generally just prevents trapped air from diffusing through the fabric.  Better to add a little fresh epoxy to the glassed surface prior to laying down the peel-ply and let it wick through the fabric.