Here are a couple of before and after photos from the carbon fiber experiment. I wrapped the seat stay last weekend and was having issues with my vacuum bagging (leaking), so with time running short I resorted to a method that one of the representatives from West Epoxy Systems told me about. After laying down your carbon in the desired pattern take some strips of release film or peel ply that will let the resin soak through and wrap the layup really tight. Start loosely so that you don't pull the layers of carbon to the side of where you want them and then tighten the wraps as you go. After you have all the resin coated material covered with the peel ply then wrap that with some strips of breather ply really tightly, this will soak up the excess resin. Now take some of that stretchy plastic wrap that people use to wrap boxes to pallets, luggage, etc., (you can buy small hand rolls of this stuff at Wal-Mart or Lowes for like $5 and it goes a long way, it comes with a handle and has like a thousand feet of the stuff on a roll) and wrap everything up as tight as you can compress it. The rep told me that many DIYers prefer this method over the vacuum bagging because you can actually wrap it with more pressure. According to him, a maximum vacuum pull only has about 14 psi whereas by using your fingers to compress everything while you are wrapping it can achieve a greater psi. It got me out of a jam because on the first attempt my resin had a very short pot life and I couldn't get a good vacuum pull. Anyway, now I have some West Systems epoxy with a much longer pot life but I'm out of some of the vacuum bagging supplies needed so I just proceeded with the hand-wrapping method. I accidentally deleted the original pictures of the seat stay juncture before any sanding had taken place so the ones shown are sanded a little. I still need to clean it up a little more and I may put a final layer of twill carbon over this for aesthetic purposes. On these joints I used unidirectional tape and then wrapped it very tightly with some carbon tow in order to compress it into the juncture even more. The vacuum bagging technique looks much more sophistocated and with practice will probably make for a cleaner layup, but with some time the hand wrapping can be just as efficient, maybe more-so. I'll shoot some more pics after the head tube has cured. The first joint is not quite a thing of beauty however it is only the first attempt and I'm fairly certain that it is gonna be plenty strong, actually I'm pretty certain that I have overbuilt it, however the head tube and BB area are where the real action takes place so that will need to be solid. We'll see. Ever onward!
Here are a couple of before and after photos from the carbon fiber experiment. I wrapped the seat stay last weekend and was having issues with my vacuum bagging (leaking), so with time running short I resorted to a method that one of the representatives from West Epoxy Systems told me about. After laying down your carbon in the desired pattern take some strips of release film or peel ply that will let the resin soak through and wrap the layup really tight. Start loosely so that you don't pull the layers of carbon to the side of where you want them and then tighten the wraps as you go. After you have all the resin coated material covered with the peel ply then wrap that with some strips of breather ply really tightly, this will soak up the excess resin. Now take some of that stretchy plastic wrap that people use to wrap boxes to pallets, luggage, etc., (you can buy small hand rolls of this stuff at Wal-Mart or Lowes for like $5 and it goes a long way, it comes with a handle and has like a thousand feet of the stuff on a roll) and wrap everything up as tight as you can compress it. The rep told me that many DIYers prefer this method over the vacuum bagging because you can actually wrap it with more pressure. According to him, a maximum vacuum pull only has about 14 psi whereas by using your fingers to compress everything while you are wrapping it can achieve a greater psi. It got me out of a jam because on the first attempt my resin had a very short pot life and I couldn't get a good vacuum pull. Anyway, now I have some West Systems epoxy with a much longer pot life but I'm out of some of the vacuum bagging supplies needed so I just proceeded with the hand-wrapping method. I accidentally deleted the original pictures of the seat stay juncture before any sanding had taken place so the ones shown are sanded a little. I still need to clean it up a little more and I may put a final layer of twill carbon over this for aesthetic purposes. On these joints I used unidirectional tape and then wrapped it very tightly with some carbon tow in order to compress it into the juncture even more. The vacuum bagging technique looks much more sophistocated and with practice will probably make for a cleaner layup, but with some time the hand wrapping can be just as efficient, maybe more-so. I'll shoot some more pics after the head tube has cured. The first joint is not quite a thing of beauty however it is only the first attempt and I'm fairly certain that it is gonna be plenty strong, actually I'm pretty certain that I have overbuilt it, however the head tube and BB area are where the real action takes place so that will need to be solid. We'll see. Ever onward!
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