Hey all,

I've just been asked if I might do some more carbon skinning. I'm only really interested if I can advance the process a little, it can be a touch hit and miss and represents quite a lot of effort so I'd like to learn something from it.

Anyway the main problem I have had in the past was adhesion / conformation of the skin to the surface. This is the biggie that I want to eliminate.

Using the skinning bascoat (black,fairly thick epoxy) works fairly well, but it can lift off if you don't keep an eye on it. And edges and sharp curves can be a real problem area. I usually leave excess around the edge and then tack that to the underside of the part, so it's very easy to get a little lift around the egdes and I end up checking every half hour until it's cured!

What I was thinking of doing was using a clear resin, so that if it bleeds through the cloth it won't affect the finish. I was then going to wait until it went tacky, lay the cloth and then cover with peel ply and place in a bag, then vacuum and hold until cured.

Any thoughts / suggestions?

Cheers

I did a project for a friend like that. He wanted his Ford mirrors covered in carbon 2x2 twill. I picked a part from a junk yard, not sure what it was from, but was black plastic-for a test piece.
First I wet sanded the texture off of it. I applied resin to outside and waited for tackiness and wrapped the outer portion and about an inch into the housing itself (which was sanded also). I wetted out the rest of that fabric and rolled it to get as much resin out as I could. Once that dried, I wet sanded it down smooth again, without getting into the fibers too much.
The second and final wetting was allowed to get tacky and I placed the outer fabric on the housing and wetted it out also. From there, I let it sit with peel ply on it until it was all laid down and didnt have any trapped air. I vacuum bagged it with the bag adapter in the bottom of the mirror housing. This pulled the edged into the inner portion and gave it a nice wrap around and made it look like a full carbon part. Once dry, I mixed a small amount of resin and went over the carbon and allowed that to dry. It looked great and I applied the same steps to my friends truck mirrors. The only difference is that I sprayed my friends mirrors with auto clear coat. It's been 3 years ago and it still looks good.