I’m going to built an xps surfboard and I’m going to laminate it with black dynema, because of dynema tend to float over epoxy I want to do it with vacuum bag tecnique, in the past I already use vacuum for windsurf, snowboard wakeboard and skateboard, I’m just thinking to not use peel ply to have a smooth finish on top and using only it on the bottom part. I’m not so sure if it’s a good idea but i think i’m going to try it and that’s the reason… I’m going to laminate bottom first and then apply the peel ply one layer only 2 inches narrower than the outline, in this way I can turn it and laminate the top in this way I can vacuum bag it only one time stretching the bag in the upper part to left it very smooth, while i can collect all the wrinkles of the bag in the bottom part covered with peel ply. I never did the 2 laminations in one time and I don’t know if someone already use this tecnique, any suggestions are well come.
The goal to do 2 lamination in one time is to shorten the prosess, using less material to mask bottom while laminating the top and vice versa, the top saturated fiber contacting to smooth bag will came out very close to a hot coat treated fiber, so I’ll use less resin for top hotcoat.
I know Justin Ternes laminate it in 2 times, I’m not so sure about Drew Bagget.
Not really sure what you are planning from your description.
Why not laminate bottom with free lapp, cover in thin plastic to protect v-Bag and put in v-Bag. Cure and pull it out of bag and clean up the free lapp.
Laminate deck with free lapp. Wrap with plastic like above and v-Bag again. Add peel ply if you want.
my idea is to vacuum bag it only one time with top and bottom laminated in one time, I would like to know if someone did it and which are the pros against the cons
I’ve not done because I’m afraid that when I flip it to apply the cloth and resin to the other side, the cloth on the first side will droop down and turn into a mess. I just do one side at a time. If you pull this off, I would love to hear of your method and experience.
I’ve done an excessive amount of one-time two-side lamination, but only a couple vacuumed.
Even though I did a tight lamination, the bagging had a tendency to pucker wet rail fabric. Also after curing, removing the bag leaves enough texture that it needed to be refinished. Finished out of the bag is a pipe dream, but a worthy one, for surfboards anyway.
With surfboards I found no real advantage to bagging it except, in my opinion, the laminate can be squeezed a bit tighter. Other than that the finish out of the bag was generally not good enough for a no-sand surfboard.
I’ve done that only once and the results were not perfect, but I will stick with this method next time.
I used some 3M adhesive spray on the core material (XPS) to stop the glass layers falling off and it worked like a charm. My main problem was that I did not wet out the glass properly so some delamination occoured after using the board for a week, but thats due to lack of experience as it was my 2nd board build.8
The only other problem was that I was worried to turn around the vac bag during the process, so the bottom surface was far from perfect (vac bag had wrinkles on bottom side).
I did not use peel ply or breather material, the board went straight into the bag, with spiral wrap infusion tube around the rails.
The board itself is quite small (150x50cm) with a channel, not sure if the same setup would work on a larger/more complicated board.
one more thing:
Just a theory but next time I will weight down the laminate after putting it into the vac bag while I think the rocker can deform as the laminate cures .
One shot vacuum laminating cannot be done effectively , by going half way… resin infusion is the only correct method to aim for…anything less would be like writing a CAD programme for a CNC to sharpen pencils…you can’t be half pregnant.