Transom continued again
After the core was in I started making knees out of Coosa for the transom thinking I was going to put it in all in one shot. This was not really a good idea because it did not take into account the thickness of the glass for the inner skin so I have to go back and trim them.
So I started thinking that there had to be a better way than when we put in the outer skin layers and core. Obviously there was no way I was going to do any big job in the middle of the summer again. It also occurred to me after some research that 1708 biaxial was not really optimal because the 8 oz mat in the 1708 does not really add much strength but requires a ridiculous amount of epoxy to wet out. Supposedly the mat is there for bonding to substrates like plywood when you have a resin other than epoxy that does not stick as well. It is also for finishing so the woving does not show through finishes. The strength is supposed to come from the directional fibers. I probably should have asked you guys first, but for the inner skin I decided to go with
1 layer 1708 (mat side facing the core)
3 layers of 24 oz triaxial (no mat)
1 layer of 1708 (mat side facing out)
What I found was that the 1708 with the mat is difficult to wet out with epoxy unless you have it on a horizontal surface where you can just pour on vast quantities and then move it (a pain). The 24 oz triaxial wets out really easily in comparison so you can lay it in place dry and wet it out on the spot. It takes alot less resin and seems to conform to curves better without the mat. It seemed to conform well to the routed edges so I was able to curve it all the way around to the back all in one shot, and lay a little extra in the corners. My only complaint about the 24 oz triaxial is it tends to fray really easily so you don't want to move it at all once you have resin on it.
I would love to hear any opinions on how to improve my workflow because we are still pretty inefficient and I still have a deck to do.
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