Last spring, when preparing to glass the beam interior, I decided to precut more of the reinforcements that would be laminated later. I find I am more efficient if I keep doing the same type of task once set up and prepare materials for later steps. Now my preparation is paying off as I am ready to install these pieces of material into the beam. You can see I have both carbon fiber (black) and glass (white) pieces cut and ready to install. I still use the rolling fabric cutter, and found it works as well on carbon fiber as it does glass. I also cut some peel-ply, which the rolling cutter doesn't work on too well, so I would have no excuse for not adding peel-ply.
While the epoxy and glass on the interior sides of the beam set, I moved to the inside end of the beam (the end that will be pressed against the main hull). This end of the beam is subjected to some major stresses when in use because the float is cantilevered out about 6-ft, pressing this end into the main hull like a nut in a nutcracker. Therefore, there is lots of reinforcing needed to transfer the stresses to the central mounting modules in the main hull. Today I added several layers of uni-directional carbon and bi-directional glass fabrics on the inside. This was somewhat finicky work, trying to work the fabrics under the overhanging fillets. Plus, it is more difficult to determine if the carbon fiber is fully wetted by epoxy because it is opaque, even when wet. Nonetheless, as you can see, I got it all laminated in place and covered with peel-ply. Again, allowing some time for the carbon layers to start to set before adding the glass layers helped keep the lay up neat. I couldn't add peel-ply to every square millimeter because of the complex geometry under the fillets, but I covered at least 90%.
Once the sides set enough, I was able to pull back some of the peel-ply near the bend in the beam to add some additional glass reinforcement. You can't yank the peel-ply too soon or you will pull out some of the reinforcing fibers and make a mess. But I was able to remove the peel ply quickly enough (few hours) for the next layer to form a chemical (stronger) bond with the previous laminated layer. I also trimmed the extra glass along the edges of the overhanging fillets before the epoxy got too hard. If you enjoy being stuck by hundreds of glass needles, you can wait for the epoxy to fully cure and then try trimming the edges! Definitely easier, quicker, and less painful now.
