I just came back from NC where Don Bowers and I worked on new approaches to carbon and I thought I pass some of these ideas along. Carbon does present difficulties because A. you can’t see through it, B. it’s tough to cut in the gelled state and C. it’s black. First off we decided carbon is best used on decks to reduce denting. We’ve been using it for a couple years up there as stomp patches which we just kinda free lapped. Looked bad, worked good. This new project we wanted a more aesthetic and appealing finished product. First thing was A. how to trim what you can’t see through. This was done with a lap cutter. First the board is taped and then the lap cutter is run to trim the tape to the lap width. The excess tape on the inside of the cut is removed and the rest of the rail on the outside is taped to completely cover it. Next was B. How to get a clean trim with a material that is hard to cut. We decided to trim the cloth dry. To do this we first stuck the cloth to the taped blank with 3M clear General Trim Adhesive no. 08074. This held the cloth while we trimmed, again using the lap cutter. The cloth is then wet with epoxy and allowed to harden. After it has hardened we then sanded the edges of the carbon to make for a smooth lap. After sanding we then taped a nice pattern on the deck, to let some of the carbon show, (I just did a 2 inch strip down the middle) and the cloth is painted with silver spray paint available from Walmart. We used the silver paint because it contains aluminum powder and is VERY opaque. It’s the only thing I’ve found that really covers carbon. Plus silver and black have a great look (at least that’s what Raiders fans tell me). The tape over the rail is then finally pulled. It has provided protection of the blank through the gluing of the fabric, the laminating of the carbon and the painting of the fabric with the silver. Pretty good for one taping. Next I used 3M pinline tape to outline the inlay. I used red and matched it with the labels. Following that I then laminated the deck, color and pinline complete, with one layer of 4 oz. S-glass. Labels went in during this step over the silver. The next day I sanded the lap and laminated the bottom with two layers of 4 oz S, did my hot coats and boxes and it’s ready for the sander. The board is a 9’ longboard and right now weighs 11 lbs with a deck that won’t dent and a bottom that is quite tough. It also looks cool as shit. (Eat my dust, French!) Hope this helps.
Hi Greg, Have you ever worked with pre-preg carbon cloth? I’m not sure if the temperature of the resin would get warm enough to get the pre-preg resin flowing, but it sure is easy to cut and work with in the pre-preg state. I think you can get pretty low temp resin in this type cloth, around 150 degrees F. Alternatively, by using EPS, and a vacuum bag you might be able to heat the bagged board up in the bag while in vacuum. The slight expansion of the EPS, combined with the bag would compress quite a bit I guess. How hot can your EPS blanks get before they go bad? I have had some success with the following pre-preg situation: Cut the cloth to the desired shape and saturate it in resin. LAy it onto the board and laminate as usual as quickly as possible. So far no delamn has occurred, but who knows how good the bond really is. I have only done this with carbon under the cloth to provide additional stiffness on stringerless boards.
Pre pregs provide a number of difficulties of their own that I wanted to avoid with this process. Most of the techniques I try to develop don’t include vacuum bagging because most of my customers aren’t equipped to do this. We have also, in the past, had problems with vacuum bagged boards breaking as compared to hand lay-up. We can only guess that this might have to do with the fabric being too dry or a poor bond with our substraight as you alluded to. Generally this has been a problem throughout industries employing prepregs in conjunction with foam.
Who knows where the world would be without people like you. I would personally like to thank you for all your hard work and research. from the east coast.
well then… where are the pics!!! sounds like an awesome board. has it been ridden yet? differences in performance?
Greg, I am going with the theory of not enough resin for a good bond. I know the snowboards that use prepreg glass in stead of wet layup definately delam much easier. Film adhesive would probably solve this problem. On another note, you mentioned spray painting with silver spray paint. Your method sounds like a low cost method of Hexcel’s Texalium. They start this product with a silver metalic coating, then also make additional coatings if needed in blue, gold, black and I think red. Pretty neat stuff, but only really good for press molding or bagging. Too stiff.
I guess some pics are in order. See what I can do.
Greg - Thank you very much for this info both here and e-mail!
I have built a couple boards with that aluminized fabric. I got good results both in finish and strength. But I was inlaying, not laping. It was stiff and I can’t imagine laping the stuff. But it did hold up very well to denting. I’m real bad about denting decks and with that fabric I only dented slightly. Using it again I would use the same technique as the carbon above.
Hexcel was only making it in France, but now they are making it in the us is a variety of different lower weights than the original version.
I can see it as a very interesting product for decks. One thing I have been concentrating on recently is finding a better deck material. Almost everything I’ve tried beats the old 2 layer deck that we’ve come to know and love over the years. Seems there are now plenty of materials out there to move past this simplistic manufacturing technique to something that really works. 6 oz. carbon is now running $6.75 a yard. That comes to $20 a board on longboards to eliminate denting all together. Seems worth the price to me.