On Aug 14, 5:38*pm, rich wrote:
I'm sure it's intense while it's going on, but the process is done
fairly quick, compared to building the plane. Do you vacuum bag the
parts in stages, or just once at the end of the molding process?
A friend of mine is building a Glasair 2s, and I went by his shop and
I told him his molded parts looked different than mine on the inside.
I found out the later kits' molded parts were vacuum bagged to save a
little weight. Mine were just wet layed up in the molds. I'm not sure
how they got the foam cores to stay in the mold without vacuuming them
down somehow, They must have used a male plug to just push them into
position.

On Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:12:14 -0700 (PDT), BobR



wrote:
On Aug 14, 3:05*pm, Bob Kuykendall wrote:
On Aug 13, 8:50*pm, rich wrote:

...Making the big parts in molds is easy...

Please come to my shop and help lay up a set of wing or fuselage
skins. I'd like to see what makes it easy.

Thanks, Bob K.

If you have good molds, the right tools, the right materials, and
enough people it is easy. *I watched a video that showed the workers
doing the layups for Cirrus parts and it was both easy and efficient.
That doesn't translate to a one off builder working on their own
though.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The parts were only vacuum bagged after everything for the completed
part was in place. They had it down to a very efficient though still
messy process that went quickly (out of necessity). I have seen
several videos of various fiberglass molding operations and most start
with coating of the inside of a female mold with a release agent.
This is followed by a gel-coat iif it is being used and the initial
glass layups. They may use pre-preg glass or not, it seems to vary
but they will be applying liberal amounts of epoxy as they proceed
using it to lay the glass down and hold any foam / nomex and other
parts in place. Next the inside skin goes down followed by peelply
and bleeder cloth. Finally the put the plastic covering and seal the
edges before pulling the vacuum. The final element may be the most
important, they move it into an enclave to cure.