Weekend Progress - First Foam

This weekend was spent bending foam.

It was my first hands on experience and I was really nervous that I'd be too aggressive and snap the sheets so I really took my time. The first strip took two hours!
Now that did include all the stops to pick up different tools and figure out what was needed to get the job done, but by the third strip I was getting the time down to about 40 minutes. Still a long time, but I haven't snapped a sheet yet, so that's a good thing, right?

I did find that the foam is a lot tougher than I expected and breaking a small cut-off in my hand felt much different than snapping a piece of blue or pink insulation foam. The latter will only bend a little before snapping while the corecell bends and then feels "plasticky" before breaking.

In the end, I was able to lay down nine strips this weekend for a total of 9' (2.7m). I'm hoping the pace picks up a bit, but I'd rather get them done right instead of rushing. I did notice that my last two strips are laying down better than the second and third. I think it's because I'm being more aggressive and over-bending the strips so that when I pull it back to the stringers it sits deeper into the curve.

First strip in place before trimming to size

It took forever, but in the end I got a nice fit along the battens

A view from the backside

Nine strips down - a lot more to go...

In other news, I had almost forgotten about the test I set up last week.
I was curious about the release properties of some wax I found mentioned on the "Composites Central" bulletin boards and found it to be every bit as good as they said it would be.

The wooden block I applied the wax to was not very smooth and happened to be only a primer application that was sprayed over an epoxy seal coat. I had this done last year at the paint shop to ensure the primer coat would stick to the epoxy. Anyway, since this was just a test I did a really quick job of applying the wax. In fact, I didn't even wait the 15 minutes between coats as instructed. I simply applied a coat of wax, hit it with the heat gun until I saw the haze and buffed it off with a paper towel before applying the next coat. I did that four times and then laid down a coat of epoxy and some 18oz fiberglass.

After three days of cure time (because I forgot about it) I found the test block and gently pulled at one of the fabric corners, I was delighted to have the layup just pop right off with no effort at all. So for a very easy to apply (and obviously very forgiving) product, I'll highly recommend "Grignard Mold Magic" It's a bit hard to find, but I ordered two tins from www.marineoutfitters.ca for under $42/shipped.

As for the the fabric sticking to the tube, I wasn't overly pleased with that. I did scuff the tube and clean it well before laying down the fabric, but I'm thinking I'll need to be more aggressive with the sanding grit and maybe follow that with a scuffed coat of epoxy. After that, I think we'll be good to go.