And take pictures :-)


"Sapere Aude"... Dare to KNOW!

The written word is the only truly efficient vehicle for transmitting a complex concept from mind to mind...

103% of all people do not understand statistics...

Do not adjust our mind, theres a fault in reality :-)

I stalled out on this, and all the other jobs after injuring my back putting up some more lighting in the composite shop ( the back of the garage).

Back to the load floor slider. All the fabric/flock sanded off. Gone for the simplest method.
Cut all the consumables. Put the envelope bagging material down with the tape stuff on but didn’t remove the backing at this stage. First a layer of black resin and wait for it to go tacky. Using 200gsm twill I started from one end and draped the C/F so that it covered the line 120 mm from the centre line by about 2”. Turned the second piece of C/F over and draped this starting about 2” before the 120mm line over the rest of the cover. ( this gave it a V patern on the finished part.) Gave it a coat of resin. Put the consumables in place, striped off the tape stuff and closed the envelop. Vacuumed it for about 2 hours at 65% vacuum and left it overnight.

Next day debagged, checked for any defects especially in the overlap area. Put 5 widths of 16mm tow across, centred on the 120mm line. Put the stickers on and gave it all 4 coats of resin at the tack stage. Which is where this thread started.
Let it dry overnight.

Looks good with just a few small fish eyes. Over the next few days I’ll sand it back to dead matt flat, give it a final coat, sand, polish and wax. Screw the repainted furniture on, put the panel back and rejoice.

I joined this thread as the letters on the Ducati fuel tank so closely matched what I wanted to do.

As it was the first time I’d used CF I wanted to do a part that didn’t mater if it went wrong, so I used the fuse box cover.

Sanded down to give a good keying surface. Coat of CRX black resin as a base coat. At the tack stage I applied the CF. I used pro-finish 210 gsm cut to give a V patern. A coat of CRX resin, the usual layers and vacuum bagged it at about 60% to 80% vacuum for about two hours and then left it to cure overnight. While this was curing I taped and cut some tow fabric about 5 strips wide and gave it a light spray of fussionfix adhesive so I could cut it more accurately the next day without it fraying.

Next morning I gave the area I was going to put the tow a coat of resin, waited for it to tack, cut the tow down to three rows then positioned it. Gave the strip and surrounding area a coat of resin and again vacuum bagged it all. I had a small leak I couldn’t find so I only had a 40% vacuum. This seemed to help the vacuum pump as it didn’t have to generate such a hard vacuum. After a couple of hours vacuuming I left it to cure overnight.

Next day I gave it two coats of resin, the second at the tack stage, and again left it to cure. This was perhaps the only disappointment as the resin over the tow had a very poor finish, sort of reticulated and instead of black/gold had a grey cast.

Sanded that area down, taking care that I didn’t breakthrough into the CF, and applied the sticker. Four more coats of resin, each applied at the tack stage, and left to cure overnight. It dried more or less OK, just a few minor nibs and very slight fish eyes ( don’t know where they came from).
Rubbed it all down with a fine sanding sponge block until the nibs and fish eyes were removed, followed by a rub down with 1000 grit wet or dry and hand soap until all the previous sanding marks went and the surface was an overall mat finish. Final treatment was a polish using a DA with a yellow and then a black foam pad using Magures ultimate.

As a first go, it’s not bad. There are no marks on the surface but the tow is a bit disappointing. The CF twill flashes in the sun but the tow only does it at some angles and is still a naff grey at others. The sticker looks like it is floating inside the resin. Spectacular.

Was it worth all the work, effort and cost? No. It was never intended to be. It was just to gain experience working with CF in preparation for the next job. On this I think I will replace the tow with 2” CF tape.

I seem to be having a problem uploading pics, so sorry there aren’t any.

Can you post a photo? My only thought is that you placed the tow down with the spray adhesive face up, but this is just a guess without seeing it.

We're on our way. Layer of black base coat. Allowed to cure to a tacky finish. Pro-finish applied in a V patern. Resin coat applied over the top. Vacuum bagged and allowed to cure overnight. Unbagged with no observable problems or faults. 15mm tow sprayed with a light coat of fusion-fix and allowed to set overnight to prevent fraying. Slight undulation of the tow.
Next morning, layer of resin applied to pro-finish and allowed to set to set to tacky. Tow cut down to three rows, no problems with fraying. The tow was then positioned over the joint, and a coat of resin applied. Vacuum bag etc applied and vacuumed at about 40% vacuum which although lower than I have used in the past seemed to give a good shape to everything. Allowed to cure overnight.
So far so good.
Unbagged the layered assembly and this is where it went wrong. The resin over the tow, not the pro-finish, looked as though it had reacted with something although it had cured OK.

I’ve sanded it back so it’s (more or less ) flat, although it took a lot more work to said the tow back than the pro-finish. What did I do wrong?

Monday I’ll put the sticker on the tow and 4? Coats of resin over the whole lot with the previous layer at the tack stage.

Anybody able to offer advise or suitable insults.?

You will not have a good time trying to get the profinish into this contours. The backcoating reduces fraying, and eliminates unwanted fibre movement, but at the same time almost fully blocks the drapability. Where the regular carbon behaves like a cloth, profinish behaves more like paper. You could perform it with a heatgun, but I don't see that working well with either skinning or wet lamination techniques.
Jas1712: I really don't  see why profinish should have improved the result. I don't really see any misalignment or loose fibres. If you are talking about a v-configuration, the racing stripe would have covered the joint anyways.

Hanaldo. Thanks for that info. I was coming to these conclusions myself but it’s good to have some input from those more experienced than me (and that’s just about everybody).

Mick