Come on Chris you mush have unwrapped this baby by now, you can't leave us hanging op:
Come on Chris you mush have unwrapped this baby by now, you can't leave us hanging op:
Actually, I need to keep you hanging - it hasn't fully hardened. The shop is actually a shed in his back yard, and with the snow it didn't stay above the 77F needed for the initial cure. To quote my buddy, 'it's slow. Not short bus slow, just cold slow'. Pics tomorrow.
Sorry, for the radio silence, there is a trifecta of distance, illness and Christmas that prevents me from getting back to the shop. Short answer is it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, and I'm trying to figure out exactly why. The bad news is that I think there's just enough wrong with it that I'll need to make another tube for this project. The good news is that I'll have 7 feet of 3" tube made from a high temp epoxy. When I get the next one the way I want it I'll post cure both at the same time.
I'm not sure if it was the culprit or not, but I've never had good results vacuum bagging a tube. I tried very hard to make it work, but I always ended up with a long wrinkle where the two sides of the bag meet along the tube. Plus a wavy, wrinkly surface from the breather. Your pic of the tube in the bag gave me flashbacks.
Heat shrink tube or spiral heat shrink tape have worked great for me.
My buddy with build skills was on the build team for this:
View attachment 307678
He's forgotten more about carbon layups than I'll ever know, so I'm grateful that he thinks this is a cool project.
2nd attempt. After 24 hours it still isn't hard enough. Pics when I can. I've never used an epoxy with a 3+ hour pot life before, and I can see why it needs post cure.
You need to roast that sucker man . Did this one turn out without wrinkles though?
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Wrinkle free. The last one had both wrinkles and the vacuum pulled epoxy past the Mylar film somehow. Anyway, calling a Mulligan on the last one and hopefully getting this one right.
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Picture appears broken to me.
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Appears fine to me.
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