by KCStudly » Mon Jul 25, 2016 8:48 am
There are a couple of schools of thought on this. Some people feel that the wood (or other substrates, like foam) can soak resin away from the cloth/tape layup so they prefer to paint the wood with epoxy first (sometimes lightly thickened with laminating filler to help fill any pores, etc.). Some will do this as a preliminary operation, allow it to cure, wash amine, and then scuff sand to get a mechanical bond when they laminate with the cloth.
Others will lay the cloth "dry on dry" and wet it out by squeegeeing epoxy down thru the cloth, but this can lead to what I call "fish eyes", little air bubbles under the cloth after the cure. Not sure if this is from the substrate soaking away wet, or just because it is harder to tell that everything has been wet thoroughly; might also be some sort of temperature change induced out gassing.
Still others swear that you should always do your layups in one complete operation (wet the substrate, wet the cloth, place the cloth, allow to kick off some; apply wet coat; allow to kick; apply second wet coat and allow to kick; repeat however many times it takes to fill the weave plus two more coats for sanding. I have never had the stamina or patience to do it this way as it takes hours upon hours.
If it were me, I'd do the corner tape first, let it cure, trim any sharp poky stuff, wash amine, and then sand enough to smooth things out fair and scuff for the next operation. Then I'd do one side at a time, tilting the cabin as far over as you can (either jacking it up on blocks or getting some help and laying it right over on its side). This would also make it much easier to wrap the wall cloth under the floor. Then I would do the roof and front wall. Again, when you get to the front wall jack it up as much as you can (If the vertical part of your front wall is small enough you can use the Poor Man's Pre-Preg technique (PMPP)).
I didn't actually tape my wall to roof joints, but I overlapped the wall cloth onto the roof, and the roof cloth onto the walls. You will want at least a 1/4 inch radius at this edge for 6oz cloth or tape (maybe get away with less for lighter weight cloth... I happened to use a 3/4 inch radius here, but in other areas found 1/4 inch to be forgiving enough). It can be done with less radius if you are careful, but I had inconsistent results with tighter radii; the cloth can spring back and lift away along tight corners. To handle smaller radii you can lay the cloth on the bias, or cut your own bias tape... which will mean that you will have more seams and waste... but it is easier to just use a larger radius. For crisp corners I recommend a flox corner be built up prior to laying cloth.
KC
My Build:
The Poet Creek Express Hybrid Foamie
Poet Creek Or Bust
Engineering the TLAR way - "That Looks About Right"
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