Practical Composites: Fiberglass Over Wood

We are putting together some good pieces for everyone see how we are doing it. The big tip that we can tell everyone is hair spray. It is too funny to think of either of us ever sing hairspray. One has been bald for half of his life, and I have never been a big coiffure kind of guy.

The pictures that I am including are of a model that is 57" (143cm) x 6" (15cm)  wide and 4" (10cm) tall.

                       

The glass sued is standard s-glass, 2oz per yd glass from Aircraft Spruce . Our experience shows for fuselages, two plies is more than enough for fuselages. Make sure that your plies are pig enough to cover all of the piece and hang over about an inch (2-3cm). More than that makes it hard to support the piece, the fabric keeps pulling away from the edge  or it gets tangled.

Apply the hairspray liberally to wet the surface of the cloth, then use a foam roller to spread the spray and wet all of the glass. It takes a few minutes to work the whole surface. When it dries, it will feel more like paper than silk.

Having learned the hard way. You can let these dry for 15min or so, until they are not tacky to touch. However, do NOT let them dry for lunch and a trip to the hobby shop. The hair spray dries too much and coats the glass so that the resin does not stick. That is bad, it will just wreck your finish and everything will look all orange peel or like bubble city.

I hope this helps with your projects.

Czech Book

Hey everyone,

I have been getting a lot of requests recently about my book that I wrote in Czech about life in Central and Eastern Europe. I have been posting it piecewise on my other blog "So Little Time" here.It has received many positive reviews and some libel, you can't win them all. If you want it in a more complete book-like form, let me know.

Thanks,
Adam

The Big Babies

We are about to go flying! I hope within the month we are airborne with ten pounds of dead weight. It is a big day. After several years, we are turning the corner. It was not easy, and I would like to thank my folks and friends for sticking with me. Inventorship is far from an easy process. Now it is time to give birth to revenue ;)

In order to continue a beloved American tradition, each of our factory Big Babies will have unique nose art. I have been drawing for months to get this many pictures together. I am sure if you know me and the project, you probably know each of them. So I will not spend much time explaining them, I hope that everyone likes them. I have shirts available on the cafe press site. I think that they really bring out the smile in me when I talk about the planes, or the women who inspired them.