I thought reinforcing your lam with 2oz cloth would make it easier to bend with “less” breakage on the rail?
When I’ve done my skins I put on the outside glass first so you have to count on your rail tape to be strong enough to hold the whole thing together. I’m currently thinking that too much glass on the rail isn’t a good thing, but not enough leads to failure.
We’re laming on the wood first
then sealing it with sanding sealer with water based poly acrylic before sanding the raiseed grain baby’s butt smooth prior to the final glassing so it’s a bit different for us. sealing the wood should shut down any out gassing from the EPS or wood when glassing the exterior but it will make it heavier since you’re basically filling micro pores in the wood.
once we pre-build these skin with some 2oz on the inside we’re probably going to GG/elmers the skin onto the EPS like Rio did instead of glassing the skin onto the EPS with the wood like we normally do which is to:
saturate the glass on the skin on a wetout table
lay the EPS on the glass upside down
flip the whole thing and tape it down
wrap with plastic pulling tight and taping it shut
then bagging it
Probably do the same except just squeegee a thin layer of GG on the glass side and mist the eps before attaching them or vice versa.
seems like you could press thru some RR 2020 resin thinned out with extraadditive F like an RDM process from one side of the balsa to the other using a blotter on one side and really high pressures to resin saturate the internal structure of the balsa membranes merging it into the perpendically oriented glass cloth to create the i-beam structure within the skin before attaching it to the foam core with some light glass. Mabe 1.5oz on the skin and 2oz-4oz to attach the skins to the core
Regarding skin attachment… are any of you guys finding “foaming epoxy” available in small quantities for home builders? I haven’t had much luck. I’m not sure if it’s better than the foaming urethane adhesives (GG) but just checking.
Yeah, that’d do fine…
Hhhmmm… I think I may have overcomplicated a little, too. Just a simple layer or two of shadecloth would proabbly do the trick nicely.