Carbon Rails Experiment: Report

As promised, I shaped longboard, and put 4-inch carbon tape on the rails to stiffen it and hopefully better protect that vulnerable area, and make a nice colored rail design. Carbon looks cool under clear glass. I used one of Greg Loehr’s EPS blanks and his Resin Research epoxy. Piece of cake. Picture below. Notice the razor straight PVC stringer. I put the board in the rack protected from resin by plastic. Cut the carbon tape to length plus a few, and saturated it with resin on some newspaper with the tape folded on itself in about 12-inch lengths. 6 oz of resin did the job for this 9-2 board, 4.5 would have been better. I massaged it a bit to get the resin to penetrate and evenly soak. With the help of another paired of gloved hands, I laid it over the rail and skootched around slightly until it lined up the line I had drawn with my rail-marker. It would not cut with a razor so I used a pair of good shears and trimmed the ends. I had thought that by stretching it I could get it to “cup” around the nose curve and avoid the need to cut vee’s in it. Nope. I had to cut 4 of them, but they came out nice. Over all, it came out pretty good. Stiffened it pretty good with no other glass on it. But, with a couple of issues. Here are my problems. As I skootched the tape around (not more than 1/8 of an inch) to bring it to the line, and as I smoothed the tape down with my resin wet fingers (yes, it’s pretty stiff), I smeared what looks to be black carbon fuzz on my lily white board in an area about ½ below the tape line. And it is mixed in the resin. I wiped a little away with a paper towel but it still looks bad. Also, no matter what I did, the looped edge of the tape would not lie flat (just a slight ridge). I’m sure I can clean up the ridge with a little sanding, but the carbon dust in resin is a real disappointment. I also accidentally learned that saturating in resin before applying, as I did, is best. Had I spay mounted it to the rail, then brushed resin on it would have been tough to saturate it AND it would have dripped and run all over the board. I found out the bullet I dodged when, not letting good enough alone, I brushed a small amount of resin onto the rails in hopes of better adhesion. It ran and dripped badly in those places. More wiping. Questions: What would be a good way to hide the smeared ½ inch carbon/resin area? I had half way planned a pin line and now I certainly will put one on top and bottom, but I hate the thought of a ¾ inch pin line (does it stop being a pin line at some point?). Is there a way to paint the board white again? White acrylic spray? With resin mixed on the surface, spackling it is out. Since everything on this board is a first for me, should I try an opaque deck? I will probably inlay a full-length deck and bottom patch followed by 6-oz top and bottom, so I can get an even hot coat and final sanding. Actually, depending on the final outcome, I am not deterred from doing this on another board. I’ve posted my picture to the archives but haven’t seen it show up. So no picture for now.

Do you think you`re making the rails tougher? Carbon graphite is bad in impact resistance. Use Kevlar. Carbon graphite belongs under the Kevlar. Or not at all.

Sounds cool… I bet taping off the Carbon Graphite and spraying water-based White acrylic would still show the black smudges; the “hide” would not take place until way too much paint was applied. How about a wide resin pinline after the sanded hotcoat? Trying to visualize the board, Carbon rails, white top and bottom. Make the pinlines bright opaque Ferrari red and exactly even, like 2" wide? Do you plan to gloss, because the lump from the pinline may stick up a little. If you have access to Breakthrough or Nova Color, you can tape off the Carbon after sanding the hotcoat and spray these water-based paints with a touch-up gun (solid white at the tape line fading evenly towards the center of the board). THEN, very cleanly/carefully, gloss over this. Eaton and many others do graphics like this on a regular basis. I’ve done it to make a damaged new board look better with success.

If I read this right you might solve some of the dark smear by using something other than newspaper to lay the cloth on while you’re saturating it. Newspaper ink is highly soluable and will easily lift with even mild solvents (not to mention that it practically rubs off the paper anyhow). Newspaper is made from junk fiber including rags. Some of the dark fiber you saw could actually be paper fiber with ink on it. I made the mistake of using newspaper as a mask while glassing my first board (cutlap).

I emailed my brother with you problem and he replied with the following. He’s the CF in house expert, but he uses vacuum bagging techniques. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Did not get the picture he refereed to. But it sounds like he did a few steps backward. - Wetting out is good, Carbon ( unlike Fiber, needs good saturation) - To gain strength it is best to apply carbon under tension. - 6oz. Carbon is not the same as 6oz. Fiber. On a rail I’d use two layers of 6oz. but laid at 45degs not 0-90deg. - He should have used peel ply to soak up any extra/uesless resin. Peel ply blends the edges and used w/ a vacuum…!! (It’s easy to come back later and skim a clear coat to fill pin holes then sand w. 800/1000sp.) - To avoid jagged edges we pre-coat the cut w/ ZAP or Crazy Glue so the fibers stay intact. - Another trick for a fine edge is to tape outside the carbon edge then on your final drag, add some graphite powder to the resin so it blends w/ the carbon. Pull tape as the resin gels and sand the transition (Graphite sands/feathers very good). - Smoke a lot of weed… +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++== he always ends his replies with the weed comment… hope this helps, can you re send the picture? mojo

disregard the surf cam photo. It stuck from a previous post.