I am in the process of building a longer upper airframe for my LOC 7.5" Doorknob. I know that the technique of using the Soller Composite fiberglass sleeve is covered pretty well already on the forum, so I'm not going to repeat the steps on how to do it. However, I did want to report out my weights in case anybody is curious. Just to restate what's already been said in those threads: the Soller Composite sleeve works really well and provides a great finished product. I highly recommend it.
A couple of items of note:
I peeled the glassine from the airframe which removes some weight. The airframe as delivered weighed 750g. Peeled it weighed 694g. Also, after wetting out the cloth I squeege all excess resin off/out of the cloth. I use an old hotel room key/credit card for this. I curve the plastic with my fingers to match the curve of the airframe and pull from the center out to each end. I continue doing this until no more resin piles up. Of course, you can overdo this step and make the layup too dry. You'll notice this if the nice brown airframe color stops showing through the cloth and it looks white. This is too dry.
Here were my materials and final weight:
Second note: It took me about 450 g of resin to wet out the cloth (9 pumps). The weight of resin called out above is simply calculated based on the difference in the final weight and the airframe and fiberglass weight. This tells you how much resin can be pulled back out once everything wet out. In my case, over half of the resin came back out. I probably could have been more patient and worked a little more slowly when wetting out the cloth to not have used so much resin. However, I wanted to make sure the resin really was able to soak into the cardboard airframe as well and give a good bond.
Hope this data can help somebody who may be curious about the weights. I do plan on doing a couple more weigh-ins during the body work process. Obviously, I've got a lot of fiberglass weave to fill in. I plan on using thinned Elmers carpenter's wood filler (CWF). I'll report back my weights once this is done and the tube is primed.
A couple of items of note:
I peeled the glassine from the airframe which removes some weight. The airframe as delivered weighed 750g. Peeled it weighed 694g. Also, after wetting out the cloth I squeege all excess resin off/out of the cloth. I use an old hotel room key/credit card for this. I curve the plastic with my fingers to match the curve of the airframe and pull from the center out to each end. I continue doing this until no more resin piles up. Of course, you can overdo this step and make the layup too dry. You'll notice this if the nice brown airframe color stops showing through the cloth and it looks white. This is too dry.
Here were my materials and final weight:
- LOC 7.5" airframe, 30" long, glassine peeled: 694 g
- Soller Composites 7" 10.3 oz fiberglass sleeve: 131 g
- West Systems 105/206: 209 g remaining in layup
Second note: It took me about 450 g of resin to wet out the cloth (9 pumps). The weight of resin called out above is simply calculated based on the difference in the final weight and the airframe and fiberglass weight. This tells you how much resin can be pulled back out once everything wet out. In my case, over half of the resin came back out. I probably could have been more patient and worked a little more slowly when wetting out the cloth to not have used so much resin. However, I wanted to make sure the resin really was able to soak into the cardboard airframe as well and give a good bond.
Hope this data can help somebody who may be curious about the weights. I do plan on doing a couple more weigh-ins during the body work process. Obviously, I've got a lot of fiberglass weave to fill in. I plan on using thinned Elmers carpenter's wood filler (CWF). I'll report back my weights once this is done and the tube is primed.