Do the Soller sleeves neck down nicely when stretched? IOW, can you slide them over your airframe and then stretch them to get a nice snug fit?
Randy
I buy fiberglass and resin from here... https://www.fiberglasssite.com/servlet/StoreFront
Thanks Mark. Which type of sleeve did you use? All glass? Carbon? Kevlar? And how did they work out for you?
Randy
All right, up front I admit that I haven't (yet) done a truly HPR build but am working my way up through MPR this winter and am beginning to think seriously about HPR techniques for fall. Mostly I've been lurking in the HPR forums to see what I can pick up. I have seen folk talk about the different weights of FG cloth and i know that the weights refer to ounces per Sq. ft. but how does one choose which weight to use? How does it matter? How do you know which to use for a given application?
Thanks for being patient...
How do you choose what weight?
It's less scientific than you might hope.
I know folks who use multiple layers of 10oz, followed by a layer of 2 or 3 oz. That's horrific overkill -- I'm not building prybars, I'm building rockets.
I've found that two layers of 6oz cloth is way more than adequate. Never had anything that was a fiberglass failure, and I've had a rocket with 2 layers of 6oz over phenolic come in hard. The phenolic inside shattered, but the fiberglass was still intact.
When you get into carbon, it's an order of magnitude different. I have 2 4" cardboard tubes that each have 2 layers of 8oz carbon fiber on them. I can stand on those tubes, when they're laying on the ground, and I'm a "svelt" 200lbs.
-Kevin
The ideal glass-to-resin weight ratio is 60-40 for max strenght. Us amatuers usually come out more like 50-50. Figure out how much your cloth is going to weigh, remembering that the "weight" of the cloth is in ounces per square yard, and buy the same weight of resin/hardner. Example : If you are going to use 20 oz of cloth and your resin and hardner are a 50-50 mix, then buy 10 oz of each.
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