Hexcel glass

General Discussion
1

I have been on a bit of a misshion to find 1m wide 6oz hexel glass here in the uk. The supplier i get most my materials from only does glass up to 650mm wide and cannot get anything else. 

in the past for my own boards i have just used some plain 6oz  but the boards were not very white and thought i would probably be better off using a spacific surf board glass. 

 

I contacted a hexcel distributer and they had a look round and came up with a roll 1270mm wide that had the code 7628 and is aparently the same TF970 clear.

I ordered the role at a prity large expense and lamanated a board with it yesterday (rr epoxy) but was shocked and how badly the glass wets out so much so when it came to sand the laps on the top before hot coating i had found the resin had not fully soaked into the bottom layer of cloth. The glass has a extremly tight weave which looks like it will hot coat great but i cant help but feel something isnt right and that it is to risky to carry on using it. i have taken a picture bellow of the glass ans was wondering if it looks like the right stuff or what it is as i cant see how it can be used relaiably for hand lamananating. the hexcel is on the top and the old glass i used to use on the bottom.

 

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2

One way to handle tight weaves is to lay some resin down on the blank first and lay the cloth over that.  Force the resin up through the weave.  Gotta be careful that the cloth doesn’t float on top of the resin.  

3

i tried that and had that exact problem,i ened up having to spend ages trying to get it all out its even more of a pain when you come to wrap the laps. i chequed the box and it defantly says TF970 clear which is what they said the hexcel 471 was??

 

4

This is an aeronautic garde fiberglass. It’s 3.5x more tight than open waves used in surfboard industry. It’s should be use with vacuum bag or at least with an ultra low viscosity resin by hand with resin under then over and firmly press with hard squegge. Not good to wrap rails but give a stiffer laminate. I use this grade of fiber (lighter one) for foot patch.

5

cheers that would explain it then!  i will give the supplier a call and see what they say about swaping it over.