318% Upscale Crossfire ISX

Here are the fins. I just bought a new jigsaw and cut them out last night. Had them in stacks of two. One stack looks okay, but the other needs some work. I think I'm going to drill 3-4 holes in the interior of the stack and then use dowels to hold them together as I sand the sides down to match. Probably have 1/8th of an inch to remove in some spots.

I plan to attempt rolling the BT sometime this week. I have a full length phenolic coupler that I'm going to wrap in Duralar and use the method that John Coker does when reinforcing a tube w/ 'glass. It seems simple, and I don't have a setup that makes me confident using TFish's methods quite yet.

Glad to see you back at it!

glad you're back at it. a disc and drum or thin belt sander go great with the band saw. I always cut outside the line then sand up to it. I have much more control with the sander than the band saw.

Rkeller, I fully agree! I think I just jumped the gun. Got to excited to use my new 'toy' and didn't think about how 'wiggly' the jigsaw can get.

*Update*

Worked on rolling the BT today with a little help from my dad. He was very interested in the process, and I was glad to learn something new with him. We'll find out in a few hours whether or not I did everything correctly, but it was a great experience. More work than I expected, for sure.

Details:

I am using 8 Harness Satin Weave 'glass. I used a piece ~30 in. long by 32 in. wide (giving plenty of extra room in BT length for a bit of first timers forgiveness). I used a little over 1 set of 3 to 1 pumps of US Composites Medium Epoxy/Hardener. As of yet I do not have a digital scale to weigh items, so I used 6 pumps of epoxy to 2 pumps of hardener, and ended up with just under half of the amount mixed left in my butter bowl.

I laid everything I would need out on a side table, and covered a small portable bench with butcher paper (which is a witch to tape down, btw!). Using Jon Cokers method, I laid the 'glass on top of the bench and poured a portion of mixed epoxy onto it. I spread it around the cloth with an old Subway gift card and removed as much excess as I could (I checked by squeegeeing in different directions, looking for lines of epoxy that had not soaked in). After the cloth was saturated the glass was no longer shiny and white and had the same dull silver color throughout. Had some air bubbles but I got those out as well before placing my parchment covered mandrel on the fabric.

The rest is pretty much history. I left a portion of the butcher paper so that it wasn't taped to the bench so I could use it to help lift the edge of the cloth to the mandrel. Stretched and straightened the cloth as I went and kept a constant tension. Smoothed my hands over the cloth to continue to work the epoxy into the 'glass. I chose to do 3 wraps of cloth, and 3 wraps of porous teflon coated release film after. I set the tube on end and let it cure for 8 hours before taking the film off and as of right now am very impressed with how it turned out. It is a tad bit sticky yet, but our temps have dipped into the 60's so I suspect that to be the culprit.

Pic 1 of the setup after the final wrap of film. Pic 2 is what I could see of the 'glass layup and it seemed to be fully saturated.

who is doing the vinyl for that rocket . Sticker shock ? He has that set

Chris, I have yet to think about that!! I'm not quite sure, but I guess I should look into it.

Alright, got my fiberglass tube done and ready to chop to size. I've scrapped the fins that I cut out w/ my jigsaw in favor of a set cut using a sliding miter saw, so I will have those cut out this week I hope. Until then, how about this??

Unwrapped the NC & TC that Sandman turned for me and realized that I never brushed them w/ thinned epoxy. So, I got that done today. I love the way that they turned out that I plan on keeping them as is. I don't want to really paint over such gorgeous wood! Pics were taken while epoxy was still wet. Really soaked up the epoxy, so I'll be sanding this coat down a bit, and reapplying.