Opinions on cloth inlay techniques

General Discussion
1

The archives give a number of walk throughs on doing cloth inlays, most are of two different methods:

Laminate the cloth directly to the foam first, then do a normal lamination with the fiberglass cloth,

or

laminate the cloth (on the foam or between layers) and the glass all at once.

I don’t want to ruin my first glass job, so I’m interested in any info on which is better. I’m going to laminate the cloth directly on the board, I want to know if it is better to lam everything at once or the cloth and fiberglass separately. I’ll be using UV resin, doing a 4+4 S weave deck and a half deck patch.

Thanks.

P

2

Hi, I would go for laminating the cloth directly onto the foam first, then you can get it all tidy first. If you try doing the inlay & cloth together, youll have to wet out all that cloth with resin & Id be worried about any loose threads coming off the inlay fabric, which would ruin your job.

3

I’ve seen a lot of posts in the resources pointing that way, I’m just worried about bond strength. I beat the crap out of my boards (not on purpose, just ride hard, suicide drops, lip tosses, stupid stuff) and I’d like it to last a while!!

4

If you want the board to last longer, I would recommend 6oz glass, like a 4 / 4 x 6 schedule. 4oz and a cloth inlay is asking for trouble. Most delam comes from the cloth / glass not bonding to the boards foam. 4oz is a pretty light bond. You have to work the resin through the fabric cloth so it saturates into the foam, then your glassing the cloth. If your going through all the trouble to do fabric, and then possibly pinlines? Why not make the board last, especially if you are hard on boards like you mentioned, plus the cloth adds significant weight soaking up all that resin.

-Jay

5

Okay, 4 and 6 on the deck sounds good…

Which would go down first? Does it matter?

It’ll slow me down a bit doing 6 oz (I have to get some), but it would be smarter…

6

Howzit resinhead, What I do is after doing the tape off and laying the cloth down the way I want it is to fold back half the cloth to the stringer and wet out the foam with thinned(styrene) resin, then lay that half down and repeat on the other half. This way you don’t have force the resin thru the cloth. Next just lay some more resin on top of the cloth and squeegee it down flat. Easier and no worries about delamination. One thing though, doing cloth inlays does add weight to the board so if you are weight concious I would forget about cloth inlays. Aloha, Kokua

7

4oz cut to the rail line break first, with 6oz wrapping all the way under on a free lap over the top. Do them both at once.

-Jay

8

Hey Kokua, that makes sense to me, seems easier. Thanks.

9

kokoa, that exactly the way way we do it. i also do our high res printed inlays that way too!