I found some really cool fabric to glass my stringerless epoxy.
2 weaves of Carbon fiber and 1 weave of Kevlar.
Anyone have any experience with different cloth other than the norm?
Hey Ding…
Did some with carbon through it every inch or so in the early 90’s…Its a beerch to keep the lines nice 'n straight, and the little black fuzz the squeegee moved looked gross…
I hope you have better luck.
Josh
I saw two longboards made in Kevlar (one) an Carbon (another)
the Kevlar one was to much heavier, unbreakable and nothing special…
the carbon one is another story… very much lighter, bullit proof and with the same design as the kevlar one, she glides wonderfull
“the carbon one is another story… very much lighter, bullit proof and…”
Are you sure about “bullet proof”, Luis? Carbon is well known for rigidity, but certainly not for shock strength. It’s actually quite brittle. “Unbreakable” (in halves, or more), maybe, although I have yet to see an unbreakable board. But “bullet proof”, certainly not. Kevlar, on the other hand, is used for bullet-proof vests.
Both fibers are highly unpleasant to use in a hand lamination. You would do well to read up on the use of vacuum set ups going the full hog of bleeder, breather peel-ply layups… This stuff is uncuttable and unsandable without professional equipment or the utmost serious foul language.
Sanding dust of both fabrics are severe health hazards and eye,lung & skin irritants.
If needed for structural reasons like windsurfboards or kiteboards then the solution is to use the aforementioned vac methods and finish up with fairing compound and gel-coats, of course you lack the super duper looks.
If the looks are what you are after then “fiber painted black” or fake carbon is your friend…
Carbon is often woven into hybrids, using other fibers with complementary physical properties. Kevlar was one of the first
to be combined because of it’s ductile mode of failure makes up for some of carbon’s shortcomings. I used a carbon/kevlar
hybrid on an EPS board I made using an early version of GL’s Resin Research back when I was at Jim Phillips’ Magnola Street
factory, so that would have been 1984. The fabric was not available in light weaves at that time, now you can get all sorts of
options And you can get other aramids and fibers woven into hybrids with carbon.
The board I posted last year in the "Coil Carbon/Spectra’’ thread was an example of using one of these other carbon hybrids.
The Brasingtons have done a good bit of carbon experimentation over the last 15 years.
One thing you need to be careful with regarding the kevlar (besides the fact it’s impossible to sand) is protecting it from UV.
UV rapidly degrades the physicals of kevlar. An opaque overcoat is best, GL’s Timberflex tech comes to mind…
Quote:
I found some really cool fabric to glass my stringerless epoxy.
2 weaves of Carbon fiber and 1 weave of Kevlar.
Anyone have any experience with different cloth other than the norm?
Uni-directional CF tape rails and carbon/kevlar deck patch. It’s really not difficult to laminate the carbon/kevlar. Trimming it however, is a matter of good timing. The kevlar won’t let you trim until the resin sets just enough. Before then, the blade just skips over it making a bit of a mess. Hard to see where you’re trimming also, so if you aren’t experienced with cutlaps, you may want to add extra tape underneath to serve as a bit of a guide. The kevlar doesn’t sand for shit, when you hit it with sandpaper, it fuzzes up, so best to put another layer of cloth on top for sanding. The uni-directional tape on the rails is a bitch to do by hand, regular weave is much easier for hand layup. Matt from Resin-X had a good tip and that was to spray the rail black before the CF rail goes on because sometimes the weave opens up and you’ll have little areas where you can see the foam (yep, that happened to me on my board).
I’m about to try out a hemp/silk blend. Does that count? LOL
I’ve had a carbon/kevlar (one layer, deck) snap in half.
Had a kevlar only deck completely delam from compression forces.
Carbon doesn’t lam well, as in sticking under load. Neither does Kevlar.
I’d go with nice multi layer K glass if I wanted strength…compression, shock, stretch, and impact.
Whatever, I think a surfboard is a disposable item, meaning you use it maybe one season.
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“the carbon one is another story… very much lighter, bullit proof and…”
Are you sure about “bullet proof”, Luis? Carbon is well known for rigidity, but certainly not for shock strength. It’s actually quite brittle. “Unbreakable” (in halves, or more), maybe, although I have yet to see an unbreakable board. But “bullet proof”, certainly not. Kevlar, on the other hand, is used for bullet-proof vests.
You´re right at a certain point…
Of course that Kevlar is unbreakable, but it bends… and if she gets a punch it goes to the inside…
The carbon board will break more easily than the kevlar one, but… if the laminator guy knows what he is doing, he will put a 5 oz carbon cloth and after one 4 oz cloth fiberglass.
it will stay lighter and relatively elastic; Not like the kevlar one, because you must put much more resin on the kevlar, instead of the carbon one, because this one absorve very much more than the kevlar one.
but I´me telling you this… if you can break a carbon one in the water, well…
the only carbon boards tha I saw broken, were the windsurf ones, and always were broken by beating in something very hard at a lot of speed…
I had the “opportunity” to repair a broke-in-half board glassed on one side with carbon. I refused, much to the displeasure of the customer from hell, who whined and whimpered endlessly about “I’ll pay you for it” and some other noise. Like he maybe wasn’t gonna pay? If you knew him, no, he probably wasn’t, or it would be three bucks today, two tomorrow, and the rest never. I held my ground and god only knows what he did with the board.
for those that are “afraid” of working with carbon, here is one example:
to cut the carbon around the blank when you are going to glass it, use nail varnish and make a risk paint in the place were you are going to cut.
let it dry;
than you can cut very easily in the risk and it will not open strings…
I´m talking about epoxy resin that you can put with a rubber roll, like those they use to paint;
The dust is really dangereous for the lumbs, for instance, and the skin if it gets microscopic strings, it can harm really.
It just a matter of being very carefull with it
I saw a new JS fibre flex tractor board in a factory on the gold coast. It had a mixture of carbon and kevlar rails, thing is, the two materials were mixed at the tiny strand stage. It had a greenish carkey colour to it.
Dont think they are released to the public yet. but I’d like to get some of that tape.
Quote:
Quote:I found some really cool fabric to glass my stringerless epoxy.
2 weaves of Carbon fiber and 1 weave of Kevlar.
Anyone have any experience with different cloth other than the norm?
Uni-directional CF tape rails and carbon/kevlar deck patch. It’s really not difficult to laminate the carbon/kevlar. Trimming it however, is a matter of good timing. The kevlar won’t let you trim until the resin sets just enough. Before then, the blade just skips over it making a bit of a mess. Hard to see where you’re trimming also, so if you aren’t experienced with cutlaps, you may want to add extra tape underneath to serve as a bit of a guide. The kevlar doesn’t sand for shit, when you hit it with sandpaper, it fuzzes up, so best to put another layer of cloth on top for sanding. The uni-directional tape on the rails is a bitch to do by hand, regular weave is much easier for hand layup. Matt from Resin-X had a good tip and that was to spray the rail black before the CF rail goes on because sometimes the weave opens up and you’ll have little areas where you can see the foam (yep, that happened to me on my board). //___ For instance: with this kind of carbon it´s very simple to make a very good kind of sandwich really strong (but you must use a vaccum machine); one layer of 4 oz, one layer of unidirectional carbon tissue, 1 mm balsa and one layer of of 4 oz fiberglass (balsa to the outside). this kind of sandwich covering a EPS blank of 25 or even 30 Kg/m3 with a good stringer (this one covered with a string of 10 cm wide all over the middle of the board) will stay very elastic and strong. The rails, before putting the sandwich are cutted all over the board in 1,5 cm and covered with a string (also) of carbon, covering a little bit the top, the side an a little bit the bottom, all over the board. after this you can make the sandwich, and the rails will be covered with balsa. I´m talking of course of a longboard with epoxy. this will give a light board (maybe too much lighter…); forgetting a little bit the elasticity, you can use a poly foam (of course). there are so many ways to make these kind of sandwichs… I add one that had a EPS foam of 25 Kg/m3 one layer of 4 oz, PVC and again 4 oz. It was to much lighter, but a very good board, but it broked because it hasn´t the middle stringer…
Does anyone have some references to the hazards of working with kevlar and carbon?? Thanks
Like Mike said, I guess living around the Cape there were a lot of surfer Cape engineers who brought all kinds of things around for us to play with. I’ve done almost all of them at one time or another. Carbon is the one which has the best overall aspects for boards accept that it’s black. Gets blazing hot on a summer day. Using it as a backing for veneer covers the black and allows you to use these things. Theres a 4 oz carbon/s-glass which pretty much rocks. There’s also a double bias 6 oz out now for longboards, paddleboards, sailboards, guns etc. Ken at Segway did a series of tests on a number of backing combos and the X-cloth won, even over spheretex which I was surprised at. Carbon wasn’t tested and I’ll bet it would have done well too. Kevlar also wasn’t in the test and there are some really lightweigt weaves out there 2.2 and a 1.7. Saw a board a couple years ago that was veneer backed with kevlar 2.2. Real impressive. Mike’s right about Kevlar for a laminate though. I’ve done plenty and the stuff is a pain in the butt unless covered. My vote is to cover it with wood. Keeps it away from the sanding pad and the UV.
I have some experience in using the material that you have or one that is similar. I use these guys for tools and materials http://www.acp-composites.com/ to make kiteboards. They sell a .58 oz carbon that is as strong as 4 oz E and is super easy to use. I ended up finding most of the peel-ply and bleeder cloth at Walmart for 1/4th of their prices, but the carbon tapes and tools are pretty reasonable. Their cheap kevlar scissors are a must for cutting the cloth, without them it is truly a pain in the ass. Also Fiberglass Supply will stock some of the hybrid carbon/kevlar cloths at cheaper prices.
A few things I found in trying to use these cloths for hand lamination is that they were really never designed for hand laminating. The physical properties of the cloth are enhanced with optimal cloth to resin ratios you get with vacuum bagging. If you hand laminate, the kevlar especially will soak a very large amount of resin which can make for a heavy glass job. As a rule of thumb carbon needs to be covered with at least 4 oz. , so a 5 oz. hybrid cloth covered with a 4 oz. E or S without bagging starts to get a bit heavy. If you bag it then the weight goes way down, in fact without the bagging you may find that all the extra resin in the cloth will produce a rock hard lamination, heavy and stiff. Remove the extra resin and the weight goes down and the ride quality goes up.
The vacuum process while a somewhat pain in the ass solves most of the problems associated with using these types of cloth. Also depending on the weave and weight of the cloth it can be hard to wrap rails without vacuum. There are tricks like 3M spray to hold the cloth down on the rails but it can take a few tries to get it right. I ended up using the slow hardener (50 min stuff) on the more complex layups and larger boards so I had time to get it all sorted out and into the bag before it started to gel. Also hand lamination can be difficult to align the fibers into an organized eye pleasing look. It is harder than it may sound to get the cloth to lay straight and tight.
In the end because of the insanely high price of carbon and the difficulties with the kevlar I ended up finding that the double bias biax e cloths with varying layups of warp E or S produced a better flexing/riding kiteboard. I’d only use the carbon around the fins, inserts, and heel areas.
Quote:
I have some experience in using the material that you have or one that is similar. I use these guys for tools and materials http://www.acp-composites.com/ to make kiteboards. They sell a .58 oz carbon that is as strong as 4 oz E and is super easy to use. I ended up finding most of the peel-ply and bleeder cloth at Walmart for 1/4th of their prices, but the carbon tapes and tools are pretty reasonable. Their cheap kevlar scissors are a must for cutting the cloth, without them it is truly a pain in the ass. Also Fiberglass Supply will stock some of the hybrid carbon/kevlar cloths at cheaper prices.
A few things I found in trying to use these cloths for hand lamination is that they were really never designed for hand laminating. The physical properties of the cloth are enhanced with optimal cloth to resin ratios you get with vacuum bagging. If you hand laminate, the kevlar especially will soak a very large amount of resin which can make for a heavy glass job. As a rule of thumb carbon needs to be covered with at least 4 oz. , so a 5 oz. hybrid cloth covered with a 4 oz. E or S without bagging starts to get a bit heavy. If you bag it then the weight goes way down, in fact without the bagging you may find that all the extra resin in the cloth will produce a rock hard lamination, heavy and stiff. Remove the extra resin and the weight goes down and the ride quality goes up.
The vacuum process while a somewhat pain in the ass solves most of the problems associated with using these types of cloth. Also depending on the weave and weight of the cloth it can be hard to wrap rails without vacuum. There are tricks like 3M spray to hold the cloth down on the rails but it can take a few tries to get it right. I ended up using the slow hardener (50 min stuff) on the more complex layups and larger boards so I had time to get it all sorted out and into the bag before it started to gel. Also hand lamination can be difficult to align the fibers into an organized eye pleasing look. It is harder than it may sound to get the cloth to lay straight and tight.
In the end because of the insanely high price of carbon and the difficulties with the kevlar I ended up finding that the double bias biax e cloths with varying layups of warp E or S produced a better flexing/riding kiteboard. I’d only use the carbon around the fins, inserts, and heel areas.
The boards that I’ve made with the CF/Kevlar cloth and CF rails have all weighed in at around 6 lbs and were 6-2 to 6-4, two were fish and one was a wider shortboard shape glassed with Resin X all with 2 lb EPS core. I used single layer 6 oz CF/Kevlar hybrid cloth, 4 oz CF tape, and double 4 oz e cloth on the deck and double 4 e on the bottoms. Hand laminations, maybe I got lucky and they came out light enough, or maybe they would have been lighter if I had vac bagged them? Dumb question perhaps, but where does the excess resin go in a vac bagged lamination? I just poured on the resin and pulled all the resin out of the cloth until it felt tight, then poured on some more and squeegeed it enough to ensure full wet out.
The one pictured above was a bit heavier, but it also had two full layers of the hybrid cloth on the tail because the gorilla (mostly cropped out of the picture) shown holding it has size 16 feet that tend to go through the decks of his surfboards.
For me, the glassing the rails is the trickiest part. What I did was mix up a batch of resin, folded the cloth up and soaked up the resin then layed it on the rails and removed excess resin with a squeegee. After it gelled, came back with a razor and trimmed it like a cutlap.
After doing 3 or 4 of these, I decided that while they are really strong, it was too much of a PITA, so back to normal glassing schedules!
The physical properties of the cloth are enhanced with optimal cloth to resin ratios you get with vacuum bagging.
Well it looks like I will vaccuum bag these boards.
I will make two for my research:
2.0 EPS Stringerless (This week) 6’0 x 21" x 2.75" 10.25" tail block - Twin
2.5 EPS Sringerless (Shaped and ready) 6’0 x 20.5" x 2.63" 10" tail block - Quad
Since their 6’0" Fishes I need then to weight less that 5.0 pounds otherwise it’s pointless.
As there’s nothing new under the sun. So I figured with all of your imputs It would prevent me
from reinventing the wheel? Or at least arrive fast at where I thing these things should arrive.
Question: GL - Do you thing RR Epoxy would work with what I’m trying to do?
I’m doing kevlar taped rails with RR on a SUP I’m building all in the bag.
Very interested to see what you’re up to here.
Holler at me if you need a bag/pump for this project, Michael.