Let’s see if we can get caught up.
Last week sometime I started making paper templates for the inside of the TB. Rosin paper because I have the remainder of a roll kicking around. Started with the battery box bump-in doing the vertical partition and electronics shelf all in one pattern. Gum
Then did the TB floor. The templates are worthy; somewhat like foam, you can cut away or tape on extra to work out the details for cutting darts or whatever.
Shown here with the TB laying on its back, the back inside pattern with small notches at the top (foreground in pic) to clear the lid rails.
Yesterday I continued making the pattern for the front and side panels, all in one piece. I had to adjust the dart cutouts where the fabric will change direction at the rim miters. At the front corner I cut too much and had to add back. Then I transferred that pattern to all four miter corners before I realized that “close enough” was not close enough for the two different miter angles; so I had to do those again. But in the end it was easy to transfer the different darts to mirror image simply by folding the pattern over on itself. Here the front has been cut to fit around the battery bump, and the skinny miter darts are detailed.
With the TB lying face down on the bench, you can see the notch under the back rim (top of pic) and the side miter dart just below that (dark seam just below the upper blue tape).
An overall look at the front and sides pattern in place.
And here is a look with all of the patterns installed. The top edges run wild by a couple of inches. If I can get the fabric to do the reverse bend and wrap over the lid rim in one go I will. If not I will trim flush to the inside edge of the rim and wrap back over it when the outside skin goes on.
Next I pulled the cellophane tape off of the remaining T-nuts, wadded up some balls of stretch wrap, screwed them into the threads, and trimmed off the excess. Here you can see one prior to trimming and another after trimming. I saw this technique on a Long-EZ build blog.
I found that if I wrapped the long strands of stretch wrap in on themselves (similar to rolling cut edges of bread dough under to make rolls) to make the wads, and then cut from the outside in all around to trim them flush (rather than trying to cut the excess in one fell swoop), there were less stray strands and I got a nice tight cleaner plug.
I figure that the inside of the TB will get plenty of rough duty so decided to go with 2 plies of the narrower 38 inch wide 6oz BID that Karl donated. This, and the fact that I will be working on inside surfaces were the deciding factors for continuing with the Poor Man’s Pre-Preg (PMPP) method.
Here, working on the back wall, I have laid out and cut the bottom piece of plastic sheet to size; and traced the pattern onto the plastic. I decided to lay all of the patterns with inside faces down this time. That way it will be the top piece of plastic that gets peeled off and I think it will be a little easier with less handling.
Then I sized the top piece of plastic slightly smaller. I figured it would be easier to do all of the plastic pieces first, then switch to laying out and cutting the glass.
Once done with all of the plastic, I went back thru the traced sheets of plastic and cut 2 plies each.
Doing this repetitively, I started to get a feel for the preferred techniques handling the glass; keeping the threads as straight as possible; cutting along the strands as straight as possible to minimize loose strands; handling the plies from the corners (like Michael/Atomic suggested); etc.
The floor piece was just slightly narrower than the glass width, so I decided I could get away with less excess and laid that one out width-wise. Here you can kind of see the tracing showing thru the first ply of glass.
Two plies.
Once I had each pair of plies cut… four patterns in total, in the order I intend to apply them: floor, battery bump, back then front… I laid the top sheets of plastic back over…
… rolled them up and labelled them to keep them clean and tidy until I have a full session to devote to layup.
Turning back to the inside of the box, keeping in mind the concern expressed about epoxy not bonding well to wood glues (like PLP), I started peeling, sanding and cutting away wherever it had squeezed in or been wiped along the seams. The big bits I would slice with the steak knife along each face then pluck out the “worm”. On the flash areas, once hit with the sanding block you could see the whitish skin better and it could generally be peeled up in strips using the tweezers; or just sanded clean off. Here is a seam that I have started to work. Not too worried about chunking out little bits right along the seam as this will be filled in by the glass filleting during the layup.
Here are some of the skins I was able to peel off intact.
The same area after most of the PLP squeeze out has been removed.
Maybe not necessary, but I was in there scuffing the surfaces anyway, and got a little obsessive.
Even though the small 1/4 inch bevel I left between the 1 inch foam and the 3/4 inch wooden blocking for the battery compartment vent wasn’t too hard to glass over; after looking at the techniques used in the Long-EZ builds I decided why not fair the foam around the power bulkhead blocking a little more? With the battery opening side clamped down to the bench, you can see the original bevel on the left (inside line), and the new bevel marked out on three sides. Here I have already started to sand the side on the right and the top (bottom in pic) back to the lines.
And here it is after sanding back.
Here’s an overall look at the inside of the box after going all around, scuffing and removing excess PLP.
While moving the TB around on the bench it kept tearing spots in the plastic bench cover. After patching several holes with packing tape I decided that it was the sharp edges I had left on the block for the pull box where the main wire bundle comes thru the bottom of the TB. Spent a few minutes hand sanding the corners there, as well as softening the edge of the electronics ledge some more.
Now for something a little different. On our Adirondack trip I bought a really nice hunter/camp knife from a craftsman working out of his home shop, Chase Axinn of Chax Knives (
http://www.chaxknives.com/). I figured it would work in TPCE for food prep and other camp duties. Well Noseoil has been posting pics of a couple of his very nice blades, so I thought I’d share some pics.
I’m not a big fan of the plastic Kydex sheath, but it came custom fit to the knife with an adjustable angle belt loop.
It’s a full flat grind carbon steel blade. I would have preferred a SS blade, but my dad always had carbon steel and they are easier to sharpen; and this knife fit my hand well and “spoke to me”. The grip scales are burled walnut.
Blade length is about 6 inches and just over 10 inches overall. Not quite a chef’s knife, but plenty large enough for most cooking tasks, and beefy enough for camp duty.
One of the signature items that really caught my eye is the custom “jeweled” pins. They are made up of SS wires inside tiny brass tubes clustered inside a larger brass tube that makes up the body of the scale pins. I believe he epoxies these in and then sands them fair to create the pattern.
Chase does all of his own heat treating. Here is the etched label.
The tang on this knife is a full 3/16 inch thick, tapering down from the drop in the tip of the blade. The balance is just perfect for my taste.
Someday I will follow in my dad’s footsteps and make a handsome leather sheath for it.
by Atomic77 » Tue Oct 27, 2015 8:02 am 
That would be easier on the back, too. 
Did you even notice it? 
