Which peel ply to get? and where?

I am ready to try to glass a rocket. I have an EZI-65 kit and I think it will be a good test bed for glassing. I have watched videos by Jon Coker and tfish38 and I am ready to give it a try. I have Aero poxy, and some 3 oz cloth, from a few years back the first time I thought of doing this. I tried searching but could not find where to get peel ply. I found the site fiberglast.com but there are a few different kinds, and they seem to be geared toward being used with vacuum bagging.

My goal here is to learn new techniques and skills to prepare for a L3 attempt in the future.

US Composites>Vacuum bagging supplies.

I like the Teflon-coated film. It's not as flexible as the perforated plastic sheet, but perfect for fins and tubes (that don't have compound curves).

Aircraft Spruce.

They also carry the complete line of Perma-Grit tools that I like so much.

Another vote for the POROUS TEFLON COATED RELEASE FILM from Aircraft Spruce.

For smaller rockets 54mm min dia and smaller, I find it easier to use multiple pieces to do fin cans. A long skinny strip for each of the fillet areas. Another piece to cover the remaining body tube area not covered by those strips and then fin shaped pieces to cover the remain area on the fins. This helps on those smaller tight radius areas. I just did a 54mm min dia layup with a local High School. They wanted to use a Carbon Fiber top layer. Carbon Fiber is stiffer then Fiberglass and can be a tad difficult to conform to the radius on smaller projects. This rocket came out almost perfect using the above method.

Tony

Thanks everyone. I will look these options over, and hopefully get glassing soon.

Don't forget that you might want to get a scrap piece of tube and glass that for practice first.
You mentioned that you'll be using 3oz. cloth, and at that weight there is not much reason to use peel ply.
The grain/weave pattern on the peel ply is going to be about the same as the cloth.

Yes, I plan to practice on some spare tubes I have. The motivation peel ply is to avoid runs/drips. The one time I tried this before, I used "sock" from giant leap but had a huge drippy seam from the epoxy settling.

This Thread might be of some help.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?122170-fiberglass-basics

DOH

I got my peel-ply , and I even have a big box to have the tube sit in like Tfish suggests in his video, but when I went to get the epoxy out of the garage it was not there. Then I recalled I think I threw it out the last time I cleaned up the garage since it had been opened and sat for two years. I ordered some more aeropoxy from Giant leap, so I will have to wait until it gets here.

one other question

It is also customary to do tip-to-tip glassing on on fins when you glass a tube?

KurtH said:

DOH

I got my peel-ply , and I even have a big box to have the tube sit in like Tfish suggests in his video, but when I went to get the epoxy out of the garage it was not there. Then I recalled I think I threw it out the last time I cleaned up the garage since it had been opened and sat for two years. I ordered some more aeropoxy from Giant leap, so I will have to wait until it gets here.

one other question

It is also customary to do tip-to-tip glassing on on fins when you glass a tube?

Click to expand...

It depends on the stresses that you expect to encounter in flight. If you are not going through the wall with fin tabs, like on a minimum diameter rocket, it seems to be customary to do the tip to tip glassing, thought it may not be necessary in every circumstance.
I did it on my 24mm M-104 Estes Patriot build just to get some experience with the method.
On my 24mm Minimum Diameter build I'm doing it to make sure that if it ever is going fast enough to need it that it stays together.

KurtH said:

It is also customary to do tip-to-tip glassing on on fins when you glass a tube?

Click to expand...

The two are unrelated in my mind. Reinforcing a tube is to create a hard surface that will survive handling while tip-to-tip reinforcement is to anchor fins.

I think you're unlikely to need tip-to-tip reinforcement for most rockets.

Got it. This kit has TTW fins. When I build a kit like this, I make sure to do good fillets on the fin to motor tube joint. I am hoping to make the tube a little more rugged as my other cardboard rockets get pretty dinged up fairly quickly.