Thread: Howa Mini action - Carbon Stock Project

Originally Posted by SixtyTen

A good method for laminating complicated shapes and to keep the carbon weave from getting all messed up is to get some 3m painters plastic, lay that down on a flat table and tape it out so there are no wrinkles. You then lay your cloth on that, mix up your resin and use a squeegee to spread the resin over the cloth and allow it to soak in. You can then squeegee the excess off so the cloth is not saturated. You then put another layer of 3m plastic over this and now you can use your patterns to mark out (on the plastic) the bits of fiber you need and cut them out with scissors. You then peel one side of the plastic off, lay your fiber in the mold in mostly the right place, remove the second layer of plastic and use a paintbrush (the cheap chip brushes are perfect for this) to tamp the fiber into place. Rinse and repeat until all your layers are in, then peelply, release film and breather and your into your bag.

Its a very good way of doing complex wet laminates. Kind of similar to prepreg lamination in that you can control all your overlap distances and patch sizes quite carefully.

If you want to get really fancy, you can weigh the fiber that you plan to use, divide that by the fiber to resin ratio you are shooting for and add 10% for peelply. You then only mix and use exactly that much resin for the job. You can get as low as 26-28% resin this way, which is comparable to pre-preg. Gives for a lighter and stronger product so long as you get complete wet-out, which can be challenging depending on the resin type and ratio you are trying to achieve.

Thats really good to know thank you! For the first layer in I used the spray adhesive, the theory being it would be easier to get the cloth into shape.
The subsequent layers I laid in sections with pre wetting the cloth similar to how you described. I cut the rough shape before putting resin on to soak in,